

■N LIFE'S 


THRESHOLD^ 




CHARLE 


3 W.AGXER 




.Author of r 


riie Simple Life 




Class _BXif&& 
Book 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT: 



ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 



OTHER BOOKS 
BY CHARLES WAGNER 

r 

The Simple Life, The Better Way 
My Appeal to America 
By tJie Fireside 



ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 



TALKS TO YOUNG PEOPLE ON 
CHARACTER AND CONDUCT 

BY 

CHARLES WAGNER 

TRANSLATED BY EDNA ST. JOHN 




NEW YORK 
McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO. 
MCMV 



U3RARY of 30NSRESS 
im Oopies rtoceived 

MAR 15 1905 
jopirigin iiitry 

wU&S d AAC Not 



.W33 



Copyright, 1905, by 
McCLUKE, PHILLIPS & CO. 



Published, March, 1905, N 



CONTENTS 



WHERE DO WE COME FROM? 

PAGE 

I. LIFE AND ITS SOURCE . . . 3 

II. GOD 9 

III. OUR MEANS OF KNOWING GOD . 13 



WHO ARE WE? 

IV. CHARACTER AND CONDITIONS OF 

HUMAN LIFE 23 

V. OUR FOES AND OUR ALLIES . . 34 

WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 

VI. THE LAWS OF LIFE .... 47 
VII. INDIVIDUAL MAN AND HIS LAW . 55 
VIII. SOCIETY AND ITS LAW ... 62 



vi CONTENTS 

PAGE 

IX. RESULTS OF SOLIDARITY ... 70 

X. BE TRUE . . . . . . .78 

XI. RESPECT LIFE ..... 92 

XII. DEFEND YOURSELF : DO NOT 

AVENGE YOURSELF . . .102 

XIII. BE HONEST Ill 

XIV. BEWARE OF THE FIRST STEP . 119 
XV. BE INDUSTRIOUS 126 

XVI. REST .142 

XVII. THE SUPREME LAW . . . .150 

XVIII. REPARATION OF EVIL . . .155 



XIX. 



WHERE ARE WE GOING? 
DEATH AND ETERNAL LIFE . .167 



INTRODUCTION 



To the 

School- Children of America and 
Their Teachers 



w 



HEN one loves a country, one 
naturally desires for it prosper- 
ity and power. 



But wherein does the source 



of these lie? 

In breadth of territory, in material wealth, 
in numerous ships or soldiers? 

No, the source of all fruitful and vigorous 
national life lies in the quality of the citizens. 

The true public treasure is the popular con- 
science, is the public spirit, the result of manly 
traditions and of the education of character. 

I love America with all my heart. What 
must I wish above all things for this great 
Republic ? 



IX 



x ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

Is it not a younger generation simple of 
heart and strong of character, at once inde- 
pendent and reverent, fed upon all that can 
furnish the State with steadfast wills and en- 
lightened minds? 

I should be the happiest of men if I could 
contribute in the least to the realisation of that 
ideal. 

For many years, I, too, have been at inter- 
vals a school-master. 

I have had the rare privilege of addressing 
at the same time children of all social classes, 
belonging to all religious denominations. I 
brought them together upon the same school- 
forms, that they might together take the Holy 
Sacrament, in a common warmth of sentiment 
toward the ancient family, the noblest of all, 
militant Humanity. 

As I became more familiar with those dear 
heads, blond or brown, those wide eyes eager 
to understand, a more powerful and more mys- 
terious attraction took possession of my whole 



INTRODUCTION xi 

being. I understood that youth is the garden 
of God, and I knew the joy of the sower, who 
forgets the passing hour and the sadness often- 
times of the present, while he devotes himself to 
labour for the future. 

Dear and happy children of free America, I 
have seen you gathered in your fine school- 
buildings around your teachers. Daily you 
heard the words of the gentle Master who died 
upon a cross to show us in what degree we must 
love one another. Daily you behold in your 
public squares the figures of George Washing- 
ton and Abraham Lincoln. 

It is a disciple of Jesus and a fervent admirer 
of your heroes who sends you this little book, 
in which he has endeavoured to speak as simply 
as possible of the greatest thing there is — I 
mean, Life. 

This little volume is very incomplete. In- 
deed, it is an essay, a beginning, to which a 
sequel shall presently be given. 

But I venture to hope that those whose mis- 



xii ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

sion it is to teach youth may find here a few 
new ideas. 

And I wish that these pages may compel my 
young readers to think, may awaken them to 
moral reflection, at that period of early adol- 
escence when the question begins to be formu- 
lated in the mind: What has one come to do 
in this world? 

The essential thing is that our children should 
be made to have an interest in their own char- 
acter and conduct, and that they should catch 
a glimpse, were it once only, in connection with 
whatsoever event or lesson it may be, of the 
immense interest of Real Life. 

Charles Wagner. 



WHERE DO WE COME FROM? 



I 

LIFE AND ITS SOURCE 
" TTE enter into life without having 



ing that we are alive, as do the trees, the 
flowers and the beasts, which all possess life, 
but not the realisation of it. 

An infant does not know that he exists. He 
is, as it were, unconscious. It never occurs to 
him to ask whence he came. 

But the time arrives when a man perceives 
that he is here and that he is somebody. An 
irresistible instinct impels him to reflect on 
himself and on the world about him. This 
is the question which is forever rising anew 




asked to come, without having 
made any effort to get here. 
We begin life without know- 



3 



4 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

in his mind : " Where do all these things come 
from?" 

And this simple question takes us a long 
way. It is like the song of the cuckoo which 
you hear in the woods in spring-time. You do 
not know where it comes from ; it attracts you ; 
it perplexes you. You follow it, but it re- 
treats, until, maybe, in order to set eyes on 
the mysterious singer who is always fleeing you 
and escaping you, you have gone into the 
very depth of the forest, discovering unknown 
paths, curiously formed rocks, wild strawber- 
ries, strange plants. These voyages of dis- 
covery are never to be regretted. We should 
always be searching, exploring this world in 
which we have been placed, as travellers cast on 
an unknown land go carefully over it and 
hunt out its secrets. There is nothing finer, 
more beautiful, or worthier our attention, than 
the sight of nature surrounding us. No book 
will ever be so full of stories so entrancing. 



WHERE DO WE COME FROM? 5 



THE LESSON OF THE APPLE 

NOTICE, to prove what I have just 
said, an apple fallen from a tree. 
It was an apple, you know, that 
told the astronomer Newton the story of uni- 
versal gravitation. Who would believe that a 
mere apple, from which we make cider or into 
which we crunch our teeth, could instruct an 
astronomer? It is true, none the less. More- 
over, if you examine it closely, it will teach you 
more besides. 

If you actually knew the entire contents of 
a piece of fruit like this one, you would be 
wiser in natural science than the best known 
professors. Men would come from the ends of 
the world to see you and to hear your explana- 
tions. 

To-day let us be satisfied with asking the 
apple the one question : " Where do you come 
from?" It will reply: "From that apple- 
tree." 



6 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

And whence came the apple-tree? From an 
apple that was grandmother to this one. And 
whence came that grandmother apple? From 
an apple-tree, great-grandfather of the fam- 

And so we go on, never able to come to an 
end. The apple comes from an apple-tree, 
the apple-tree from an apple, and so on over 
and over through the centuries, into the night 
of prehistoric times. But there must be some 
end. That immeasurable line of apples and ap- 
ple-trees must terminate in some kind of begin- 
ning. There have not always been apple- 
trees. What was there, then? Before apple- 
trees, there was the earth. That, I think, is 
obvious. But the earth, however old it may 
be, with its millions of years, has not always 
existed. Whence came the earth? Why does 
it produce apple-trees? 



WHERE DO WE COME FROM? 7 



IF a mere apple sets us thinking so hard, 
imagining times so distant and prob- 
lems so vast, how much deeper must we 
be set thinking by our own existence ! 

Where do we come from? We come from 
our father and our mother, who have them- 
selves had a father and a mother. These are 
our grandparents. Some of us have been able 
to see our grandparents. After them our 
great-grandparents, whom very few of us have 
seen. And then there are kept in the family 
the names of a few ancestors. But it is only 
necessary to go a little way into the past to 
lose trace of our genealogy. How many of us 
can trace our ancestors several centuries back? 

By sure and simple reasoning, to be sure, we 
conclude that each of us traces back not only 
to the Crusades, of which some families are so 
proud, but to the very origin of humanity. 

Now whence came these first human beings? 
Whose children were they? 



8 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

They must have had a beginning, since, some- 
how or other, they came to exist. And here we 
are again at the same point we reached with 
the apple — whence are we come? Whence 
comes life? Every stream has its source. 
What is the source of this mighty stream called 
life? We do not assume too much in declaring 
life to be the result of a power capable of pro- 
ducing it. This is not what you think, or I 
think. It is what we cannot but admit. 

Now this power capable of producing life, 
this power which was before life, before the 
earth, before everything; this power to which 
all goes back, in which everything reposes, by 
which everything is accomplished; this power 
must have a name. Humanity has named it 
God. The source of life is God. 



II 



GOD 

LET us stop here and calmly reflect 
as to that belief in God to which 
we have been led, and to which we 
should give a sure place in the 
depth of our souls. Let us once more take ac- 
count of the good right we have to arrive at 
this conclusion: There is a God; / believe in 
God. In saying that, do we give ourselves up 
to a certain superstitious tendency? Are we 
under the influence of some old groundless doc- 
trine, or the dupes of an imposture ? 

To persuade ourselves that belief in God is 
neither absurd nor factitious, we need merely 
ask ourselves how we came to it. Was it by 
refraining from the use of our reason or by fol- 
lowing it? It was by following it. Our rea- 
9 



10 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

son is so organized that it is obliged, in spite 
of itself, to investigate the cause of things. All 
human thought is related to the principle that 
nothing is without cause. Eliminating that, 
there is no more possibility of science, study, 
or explanation. Our minds cannot admit of 
the idea that anything is created of itself. The 
smallest object has its reason for being. If we 
look at one of those artificial flowers with which 
women ornament their hats, — a rose, a daisy, 
a violet, — we think immediately of the skilful fin- 
gers that fashioned them. We notice the taste, 
the art, the grace, reflecting the thought 
which created the flower. Should some one tell 
us that one of those petals found its place, and 
modelled and painted itself, we should, of course, 
have reason to smile and disbelieve. 

And yet that flower is only a copy, vaguely 
similar to the original in form. In reality, it 
is made of dead matter. It is not alive, nor will 
it produce a seed wherein lie dormant whole gen- 
erations of future flowers. How could we grant 



WHERE DO WE COME FROM? 11 

that all the flora of the universe, from cowslips 
and daisies to the rarest flowers and giant trees, 
are created of themselves? Or deny that there 
is at work in all of them, thought and foresee- 
ing wisdom? To think anything else would be 
to do violence to our intelligence. We must 
think of the world quite simply, as an immense, 
mysterious piece of workmanship that presup- 
poses a workman. Anything else one may say 
is infinitely less evident, less reasonable, and 
less natural. 

Following its normal incline, every thread of 
water that runs through the mountain comes 
finally to the ocean. Let us follow the inclina- 
tion of our intelligence without opposing or 
corrupting it, and we shall surely find God. 

Neither let us be led astray by the narrow 
superficial opinion that attributes the origin of 
faith to imposture. According to those who 
profess this opinion, religion was invented and 
fostered by rogues, for the sake of power and 
profit. It is as though one said restaurant- 



12 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

keepers and cooks had invented hunger and 
thirst for the sake of deriving profit from them. 
Faith in God is not the result of imposture. It 
is the result of thought in its normal course, 
the mature fruit of our reflection; it responds 
to a profound need of our being. 

Like hunger, thirst, hope, grief, or confi- 
dence, it has often been shamefully abused. 
But the source of it is pure. 



Ill 



OUR MEANS OF KNOWING GOD 

IT is not enough to admit the existence of 
God in a general way, and merely to 
agree that there is some one beyond us. 
Humanity would be very unfortunate if 
it were obliged to hold to this summary affirma- 
tion without being able to add anything. But 
how can we do that? Can we say anything cer- 
tain of the mysterious being who is hidden in the 
core of the universe? Does not even conjecture 
seem impossible? 

Surely a human being can no more compre- 
hend God than a glass can hold the sea or a 
child's hand catch the stars. God is too great; 
we are too small. We must never forget that. 

But there are ways for us to approach him 
nearer. 

13 



H ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 



his acts and his works. A painting reveals to 
us the qualities of the painter ; a piece of music, 
those of the musician. Give me any bundle of 
books: without knowing whose it is, I shall 
know pretty soon what sort of pupil owns it, 
whether he is painstaking, studious, and intelli- 
gent. His books and his papers will show him 
to me. 

So does the work of God speak to us all of 
its author. The creation reveals to us the crea- 
tor, His power, His infinite knowledge, His equal 
attention to what is great and what is small. 
For the ant that you crush in the grass, with- 
out even noticing, is fashioned with as much 
pains as the eagle whose flight appals us. And 
though we may see in the world disturbing phe- 
nomena and accidents that puzzle our intelli- 




WHERE DO WE COME FROM? 15 



gence in seeming out of harmony, we must rec- 
ognise that these phenomena are exceptions. 

The earth, as a whole, denotes order, method, 
and foresight. Wherefore we may believe that 
even in what seems to be disorder, there is an 
order beyond our comprehension. So we say 
to ourselves that God knows what man does not 
know, and in Him we put our trust. 



ET the visible creation is not the only 



begin; but there are more. We learn to know 
God by ourselves, by our souls. To under- 
stand better let us take an illustration. 

Every one knows a rainbow. The light of the 
sun passing through water or through a prism 
divides into seven colours. Do you know that by 
these colours they have come to discover what 
substances are burning in the sun? Not only 
that, but, by a very simple process, a rainbow 




means or the best for knowing God. 
It is the first, the one by which we 



16 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

has been produced with many of the stars (it 
is called their spectrum), and in that way we 
have learned of what substances the stars are 
composed. 

Now even as, afar off, a ray of sunlight or 
starlight tells us of its source, so our souls, 
which are rays emanating from the divine 
source, speak to us of God. By those rays 
fallen into the depths of our being, we are 
brought into a sure, direct, intimate relation 
with the God who seems so far away from us. 
We are of the race of God, even as the rainbow 
is of the essence of the sun. Therefore we can 
say: " He is near each one of us, for in Him 
we live and move and have our being." 

By our spirits we are able then to attain to 
a conception of God, who is a Spirit, and by 
our moral nature we are brought into touch with 
the Source of good, truth, justice, and love. 
What is faintly reflected in us, or but the be- 
ginning of a virtue, is, in Him, at a state of 
absolute perfection. But whatever be our un- 



WHERE DO WE COME FROM? 17 

worthiness and His glory, we are closely bound 
to Him, our life is of His life. 

EACH one of us, nevertheless, if left to 
himself would run a great risk of hav- 
ing but a mean rudimentary knowl- 
edge of God. We need the help of those who 
have lived before us. This is another powerful 
means by which we are brought into relation 
with God, the religious traditions of humanity. 
Each generation cannot begin all over again the 
work of history: progress would be impossible. 
We inherit the experiences of our forebears: 
for Christian peoples, these experiences are, 
first of all, preserved in the sacred books called 
the Bible. In these books, we are brought into 
vital personal touch with men whose deeds and 
examples are of still more import than words 
and doctrines. The luminous epitome of the 
best that we possess in the way of revelation of 
God to humanity is found in the prophets of 
the Old Testament, in the Gospels, and in the 



18 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

person of Jesus Himself. Never did God speak 
to man in a clearer, simpler, more fatherly lan- 
guage than when He sent us the Christ, filled 
Him with His Spirit and put His words in His 
lips. One may truly say of Jesus that in Him 
the divine Life " has dwelt among us . . 
full of grace and truth." 

Christ has gathered knowledge of God into 
a few words for us: " God is the Father; God 
is Love." This is the highest, most consoling 
affirmation, crystallising what the human soul 
has need to know. 

What do these words mean? 

They mean that we can always count on 
God's infinite care and tenderness. 

God wishes good for us, and neither our 
faults, provided we are sorry for them, nor our 
severest troubles, nor even death itself, can sep- 
arate us from Him. 

Man needs to rest in this strengthening cer- 
tainty. 

Troubled by the glooms of life, led sometimes 



J 



WHERE DO WE COME FROM? 19 

astray by his limited judgment, he is too often 
tempted to believe that the world is given over 
to blind chance, full of irreparable injustice 
and inconsolable suffering. He needs to repeat 
to himself often, in order not to forget, that 
One who has made all things and understands 
all things, is mindful of him, has knowledge of 
his distress, and must know how to deliver him 
from his pain. Man needs, also, in order to 
walk firmly in the right, to fear the look of God 
which is Justice itself ; and, to recover himself 
where he has fallen into sin, he cannot do with- 
out belief in the Father's forgiveness. 

The certainty of being loved by God encour- 
ages man to respond with love, to remain faith- 
ful and to keep himself in touch and in harmony 
with the eternal and inexhaustible source of his 
life. 

It is one of the great sadnesses of our frail 
lives that we hunger to attach ourselves perma- 
nently somewhere, and that our love encounters 
round about us only the perishable objects and 



20 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

persons who, sooner or later, will fail us. We 
must take refuge in the love of God, not in order 
to become indifferent to human affections, but 
to find a solid foundation for them. By this 
love we reach entire confidence, a condition es- 
sential to steadfast living. 

That traveller and pilgrim called man, who 
has to march and fight and face the storms of 
life, must feel himself safeguarded and enclosed 
by the all-powerful and merciful will that rules 
the worlds. Let him, then, be sure that we are 
in the hands of God for life, for death, and for 
eternity. 



WHO ARE WE? 



IV 



CHARACTERS AND CONDITIONS OF 
HUMAN LIFE 

HAVING spoken of the source of life 
and considered whence we come, let 
us examine the characters of life 
and the particular conditions in 
which we are placed. 

Let us ask ourselves: What are we? 
What sort of being is man? 
In mere outward aspect, he is only a com- 
pound of material substances. 

You remember the old classification that di- 
vides the world into three kingdoms: animal, 
vegetable, and mineral. 

Man, by his physical nature, belongs to all 
these kingdoms. He is subject to the laws of 
weight, like a common pebble. If you should 

lose your balance on the edge of a precipice, 
23 



24 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

you would fall just like a lifeless stone. Your 
cries or your suffering would make no differ- 
ence. The fatality of weight would drag you 
down. 

Our bodies belong to the mineral kingdom 
for still another reason. They are derived from 
the earth. Decomposed by chemical analysis, 
they are reduced to a few simple substances that 
are found everywhere. 

On the other hand, through the plants from 
which we derive nourishment, we belong to the 
vegetable kingdom. Without plants, we could 
not exist. The earth contains the elements of 
which we are composed, but of which we cannot 
make direct use. If I should suggest your eat- 
ing clay, you would refuse, and not only be- 
cause of the taste. The human stomach can 
digest only materials previously transformed by 
plants. " But," you say to me, " we eat meat." 
Granted; but the animals that furnish you with 
meat, have eaten vegetables. Plants, in a word, 
are our primary nourishment, 



WHO ARE WE? 25 

Finally, man belongs to the animal kingdom. 
The organization of his body does not differ es- 
sentially from that of warm-blooded animals. 
We have senses like those of animals, except 
that many of them have sharper sight, keener 
hearing, surer scent, decidedly better means of 
self-defence, and, in general, more speed and 
agility. Like the animals, we feel hunger, 
thirst, and pain ; we grow old, we die. 

IT can safely be said, then, that man is an 
animal. But can it be maintained that 
he is the same kind of animal as the oth- 
ers? Some people lay exaggerated stress upon 
the points of resemblance. Some, on the other 
hand, indignant at such a comparison, declare 
man to be absolutely different from the beasts. 
We might comprehend this indignation, had 
animals been created by some malevolent gen- 
ius. But is it not God who has created them as 
well as us? 



26 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

Let us begin by not reviling the beasts in 
order to exalt mankind. Let us by no means 
deny the intelligence of animals. They have 
intelligence, sometimes, to a surprising degree, 
but it is our place here to emphasise a great 
elementary difference constituting one of the 
distinctive characteristics of human life. 

Man seems endowed with less powerful senses 
and with less redoubtable armour ; in a word, he 
makes his start in life with inferior chances. 
He knows by instinct neither how to build him- 
self a habitation, nor how to produce food, and 
yet he has learned how to send his sight far- 
ther than the eagle and to hear sounds that even 
the cat cannot detect. He builds dwellings that 
are solider and more comfortable than birds' 
nests, and invents arms compared with which the 
claws and teeth of lions are but playthings. 

How does that come about? 

It comes from the fact that the human intel- 
ligence advances from one thing to another, 
proceeds from the known to the unknown. The 



WHO ARE WE? rt 

advance is so slow that it often takes centuries 
to reach comprehension of something that seems 
very simple ; but it does advance, it does pro- 
gress. It is never content with what it has, 
and feels always impelled to go farther. 

Animal intelligence, on the contrary, lively, 
striking as it is, often astonishing, seems shut 
within an insurmountable limit. The animal 
attains quickly enough the degree of perfection 
of which its species is capable, but it stops 
there. Studying animals through the ages, we 
may conclude that they have no history. If 
they have one, it is for us to study them; for 
their part, they do not know or observe them- 
selves. They undergo our training, but do not 
transmit to their kind what they have learned 
from us. Have you ever seen a wise dog turn 
teacher? 

In likening the intelligence of beasts to that 
of men, let me use an illustration which will, I 
think, stick in your memory. 

You have often watched horses or bicyclists 



28 



ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 



on a circular track. They may go faster or 
slower. Some advance easily, others take so 
rapid a pace that they seem dizzy. But the 
time or the zeal they put into their work mat- 
ters little ; they never leave the circle, they never 
get ahead. This sort of exercise shows admira- 
bly how the instinctive intelligence of the ani- 
mal, astonishing in its precision and swiftness, 
is nevertheless limited to a circle from which it 
never escapes. 

Human intelligence goes another way. Slow, 
painful, laborious, its progress is like that of a 
man who would climb a mountain by a road of 
many levels. He does not go rapidly; perhaps, 
at times, he seems to be receding, retracing his 
steps ; but he covers ground, and, if he is given 
time, he will make the summit. 



He is not mistaken between good and evil; he 




SECOND mark distinctive of man- 
kind is his invincible tendency to dif- 
ferentiate the quality of his actions. 



WHO ARE WE? 29 

cannot help finding out that some things are 
good and some bad. This sense that judges 
actions and divides them into good and bad, is 
called the moral conscience. An animal seems 
to us given up to his instincts and to his sen- 
sations, a fact with which we find no fault ; and 
be he ugly or good-natured, amenable or fero- 
cious, we feel that he cannot be anything else. 
The man who shows himself to be governed by 
his instincts and his appetites incurs our con- 
tempt ; we may well call him a slave, because he 
has, of his own accord, renounced liberty and 
effort. He appears to us a monster, and a crim- 
inal; and we regard him as at least partly re- 
sponsible for his sad condition. The fact that 
man is essentially a moral being is proved by 
the remorse which follows our evil acts. The 
beast has no sense of remorse : " The lion tears 
his prey and sleeps ; man commits a murder and 
lies awake." 

Still another distinguishing mark of man 
is religious sentiment. The need he feels of 



30 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 



searching, beyond the visible world, for the in- 
visible cause that has produced it and governs 
it ; the tendency to venerate and adore the being 
hidden behind the mystery of the Creation: 
these are the distinctive signs of our nature, and 
are not to be found among the beasts. 



We are souls, and, as we have said, we are of 
the race of God. 

In this incongruous origin lie both the diffi- 
culties and the interest of life. We come of an 
inferior substance, yet something within us pre- 
vents us from remaining inferior, and, in spite 
of ourselves, we take the road toward a higher 
form of life. There are instincts in our nature, 
low, inordinate, selfish, and wicked, and, at the 
same time, we are penetrated with inspirations 
that are high, noble, just, and true. 

From the two tendencies dividing our nature, 




HOUGH we are related to the stones, 
the plants, and the animals, we be- 
long to still other degrees of being. 



WHO ARE WE? 31 

comes the struggle, the great struggle between 
good and evil. 

There are days when this struggle weighs us 
down. We should rather it did not exist. We 
envy the peace of beings who have no sense of 
it. We dream of being a flower, a bird; and 
this feeling is easy to understand. To give in 
to it would be to abdicate our rank. The 
beauty of life is in this torment. 

We owe to the philosopher Plato a striking 
figure. He likens man to a chariot. The driver 
is our reasonable will; the two horses are our 
good and bad impulses. One of the horses is 
white, and gentle but very strong; he tractably 
obeys the voice of the driver. The other is black 
and vicious; he has bloodshot eyes, rears, 
plunges, throws himself to right, to left, into 
the legs of his mate, and threatens to drag the 
cart into ditches and quagmires. The driver 
needs all his vigilance to keep in the right road, 
with the help of the white horse. 

Each one of us can see himself in this apo- 



32 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

logue. There are times when we are workers, 
sober, reasonable, and well-disposed; the white 
horse prevails. Then comes a time when all our 
evil passions seem loosed; we feel ourselves 
wicked cowards, dissolute ingrates; the black 
horse is doing his work. The best of us has to 
struggle to keep his balance. 

Truly this is a formidable state of affairs. 
But after all what better is there to excite our 
interest? Think a minute, and tell me what 
it is that most vividly attracts your attention. 
Is it not the sight or thought of a battle? 
Animals fighting, men in combat, or forces 
matched ? 

Have you ever watched in a stormy night at 
sea a ship's light wavering and disappearing, 
lifting again? How fascinated you were by 
that struggle of the trembling light against the 
elemental fury! And why? Because, without 
you knowing it, perhaps, that light was to you 
a symbol of human life. Our existence, however 
frail and tossed it now appears, has neverthe- 



WHO ARE WE? . 33 

less the impassioned beauty of a combat in 
which are at stake the greatest interests, the 
most precious treasures, and in which there is 
nothing that is of no account, because there is 
nothing that does not either increase or lessen 
the chances of success, hasten victory, or com- 
promise it. 



V 

OUR FOES AND OUR ALLIES 

TTE have seen that life is a combat. 



not intervene? The first make the task harder, 
harassing and trammelling us. At the very 
moment when we need all our strength to sus- 
tain the fight they come and attack us from be- 
hind. 

The others, on the contrary, help and keep us 
up. In the great combat of life also, man has 
foes and allies. We must stop a moment and 
consider this: for it is an important point. 



ET us speak first of the foes. Those 



ternal. They are internal when they are with- 




Is there any kind of combat 
where all sorts of unexpected 
antagonists or auxiliaries do 




that prevent man from leading an 
upright life are both internal and ex- 



WHO ARE WE? 35 

in us, in our will or our inclinations. The evil 
round about us would be easier to overcome, 
had it not, to assist it, the evil within us. A be- 
sieged city defends itself more easily when it 
needs only to resist outside assailants. It is in- 
deed exposed the moment its enemies have con- 
federates inside its walls. So it is with man. 
The evil he must fight has secret confederates 
in his own heart. In that fact lies the chief 
difficulty. 

Whence comes this evil in us, which can be 
traced from our infancy, and which is not our 
own doing? It comes to us partly by inheri- 
tance. 

Every man is an heir. He brings into the 
world, at birth, wrong tendencies. You hear 
often of family sicknesses. A new-born child 
may have in him the germs of a disease. There 
are also family vices like drunkenness, impurity, 
envy, or avarice. But we do not belong only to 
our especial family. We belong to humanity, 
which is a large family, whose principal mal- 



36 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

ady, transmitted the world over to all its mem- 
bers, is a sort of innate savageness toward our 
fellow-beings. It causes us to forget our duty 
toward them, makes us hard, evil-minded, and 
selfish, and puts us into perpetual insurrection 
against God's command to love one another. 
From this chief vice come all the minor vices. 

Besides internal foes installed within us, we 
have those that come from our surroundings: 
bad examples and bad habits. 

The emperor Marcus Aurelius, whose beauti- 
ful life has our admiration, tells, in one place, 
from whom he learned to direct his actions. He 
mentions parents, public men, and even servants. 

" In my grandfather, Verus," he says, " I 
have had an example of gentle manners and of 
unalterable patience. My father left me the 
memory of modesty and strength of character. 

" I wish to strive to imitate my mother's de- 
votion and benevolence ; to abstain, like her, not 
only from doing evil, but from even conceiv- 
ing the thought of it; to lead her frugal life, 



WHO ARE WE? 37 

so different from the accustomed luxury of the 
rich. 

" To my tutor, I owe my knowledge of how 
to bear fatigue, how to keep down my wants, 
how to work with my own hands, how to avoid 
meddling in the affairs of others, and how to 
make my doors difficult for idle tattling. 

" It was Diogenete who inspired me with 
dislike for useless occupations; and, thanks 
to him, too, I know how to bear frankness in 
speech. 

" Rusticus made me understand that I needed 
to correct and cultivate my character. He also 
diverted me from the false paths or the ways 
whither the Sophists lead. . . 

What Marcus Aurelius says here of a salu- 
tary example could be repeated many times, the 
other way round, to show the influence of a per- 
nicious example. 

If man had a sufficiently good memory and 
enough clear-sightedness to observe and retain 
the facts relative to his conduct, he would be 



38 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

able to tell where and from whom he learned the 
evil that he knows and practises. We adopt hab- 
its, the idea of which has not necessarily ger- 
minated in our brain. They come to us from a 
comrade who has inspired us, excited us, led us 
on, who has become our teacher in the art of 
doing evil. Environment exerts upon us a very 
powerful influence. We are endowed with a 
marked faculty for imitation which is indispen- 
sable to life. All that we learn depends on this 
faculty. Alas ! it is often the occasion of error 
and corruption. We reproduce what we see 
done. Any one brought up in the midst of bad 
examples runs the risk of imitating them be- 
fore even perceiving his danger. In bad ex- 
ample, under all its forms, we see our principal 
external enemy. 

If we had neither evil inclinations within us 
nor perverse examples round us, the struggle 
between good and evil would be much simplified. 
We should be free to fight unhampered. But 
that is not the case. Man is a fettered fighter, 



WHO ARE WE? 39 

Think of a soldier, laden with baggage, drag- 
ging a ball chained to his ankle, and under those 
conditions obliged to fight. 

Suppose I give one more illustration, since it 
does no harm to lighten a grave subject. 

You have all seen men running races. They 
take off everything that would hinder them, in 
order to run better. So prepared, they start 
out over the course. But often to complicate 
the race different methods are devised. One of 
the most successful, and most amusing, consists 
of putting the runner into a sack tied round his 
hips. His arms are free, his legs imprisoned, or 
else his arms, too, are tied, leaving only his head 
free. This is called a sack-race. It is rather 
difficult, but, if the runner perseveres, somehow 
or other, he reaches the goal, and there is cer- 
tainly credit in winning under such conditions, 
and such are the conditions imposed on men 
whose task is especially hard. 

Let us not forget this ; and if some of us run 
faster than others, let us conceive that perhaps 



40 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

they are reduced to running in a sack, — we 
must not let ourselves despise them. 

HAPPILY there come powerful allies 
and set themselves opposite to all 
the enemies gathered against us. We 
must keep them in mind. To count our adver- 
saries is prudent, but to review our friends is 
more agreeable. It goes without saying, that 
this must not prevent us from relying on our- 
selves and our own efforts. The assurance of 
allies is given us, not to lead us into inertia, but 
to inspire our courage and keep up our hope. 

Our first allies are within ourselves. If our 
souls bear traces of unhappy inheritance, they 
also bear marks of good omen. There are good 
instincts in us, which are as much our heritage 
as the bad ones. Without our knowing they 
come to us from those who have lived before us. 
These hereditary virtues are no more to our 
credit than hereditary vices are our personal 
fault. We benefit in this respect by the law 



WHO ARE WE? 41 

that formerly was against us, but " noblesse 
oblige." We are not permitted to let be lost or 
lie dormant the gifts that accompanied birth. 
Let us be thankful and make the best possible 
use of them. The good that is in us must serve 
to war against the evil that is beside it. 

With inherited virtues, we may place national 
qualities and those of the religious and social 
centre where we live. These we cannot appre- 
ciate enough. The heir of generous blood, en- 
ergetic character, mental balance, and a soul 
that loves truth, has a patrimony more precious 
than riches, a sound legacy to be devoutly 
guarded. Such provision of good health in 
one's being, equips for battle. 

We have another ally : good example with its 
power of radiation. Bad example inclines the 
will toward evil, invites us, tempts us. But the 
example of a beautiful life charges us for good. 
The one excites the beast in us, appealing to the 
evil instincts and leaguing with them ; the other, 
like a trumpet call, ringing through our souls, 



42 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

summons every healthy energy. It gathers 
them, orders them, ranges them for battle, and 
leads them into action. Example is not only an 
indication, a counsel. It does not merely point 
out the right way, and then leave us to our- 
selves as a fine model of handwriting indicates 
the true form of the letters. Example is not 
that — but an active force, that injects us with 
the principle of energy. One might almost say 
that it acts contagiously upon us. 

Example does not die with those who have 
given it. It survives them. And we have, thus, 
not only the good examples round about us, but 
those of the entire past. To sustain, strengthen* 
and help us, we have the actions and the 
thoughts of those who, before us, have sought 
truth, loved justice, and done good. Heroes, 
saints, wise men, prophets, Christ and the apos- 
tles, all, in fact, humble or famed, who have been 
champions of the right, — are our allies. What 
a noble train! What honour to enter into this 
immortal phalanx if only under the title of an 



WHO ARE WE? 43 

obscure little soldier! All the helping powers 
of humanity surround us. Christ, one day, 
spoke these words, "Lo, / am with you, even 
unto the end of the world." Holy humanity of 
all ages gives us this assurance through his 
mouth. 

And above human life and the struggles it 
causes us, we have the eternal Will of God, de- 
siring that God exist, that Justice triumph, and 
that Evil be vanquished. 

Not alone then, or betrayed in advance to our 
enemies, do we enter into the combat, but under 
a good captain, with countless allies, and with 
the assured hope that at the end of our strife, we 
shall bring back victory. 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO 



VI 



THE LAWS OF LIFE 

COMBAT has its rules, to which, un- 
der pain of defeat, soldier and offi- 
cer alike must conform. It is not 
enough to be a resolute soldier; 
with spirit should go discipline. . And the offi- 
cer, for his part, no matter how ingenious and 
confident he be, needs knowledge of the art of 
war and the principles of strategy. 

Let us, accordingly, the better to prepare 
ourselves for the field of honour, study carefully 
the laws of life, and the main occasions when we 
are called upon to assert ourselves. 



47 



48 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 



TO do this, let us consider, first, what 
constitutes a law. There are many 
false notions on this point, though 
it is one of the most necessary to state precisely 
and to understand. We shall look at it as sim- 
ply as possible. 

Most men believe that a law is an order that 
it has pleased some one to give, but that might 
just as well have been formulated differently. 
To modify a law, it would be enough to get rid 
of a few ideas or a few customs. Applying this 
principle to the regulation of life, amounts to 
declaring that everything is but artificial con- 
vention or arbitrary ordinance. Doubtless 
there are arbitrary laws which men have made, 
guided by their passions or misled by their ig- 
norance. But the laws of life are not arbi- 
trary ; they are as necessary and eternal as those 
of nature. They exist; we may ignore them, 
but we could not change them. Our greatest 
interest consists in seeking them, in carefully 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 49 

meditating them, and in following them. 
Every one knows these commandments from the 
decalogue, " Thou shalt not kill ; Thou shalt 
not bear false witness against thy neighbour; 
Thou shalt not steal; Thou shalt not commit 
adultery." 

Where did these commandments get their 
value? Was it because Moses promulgated 
them? or because the Church adopted them? 
Did they not exist before being written? 
Might not God, to whose inspiration we have 
traditional reasons to attribute them, have de- 
creed others and said, for instance : " Thou 
shalt kill; Thou shalt lie; Thou shalt steal; 
Thou shalt commit adultery " ? In that event 
the good men would have been the murderers, the 
thieves, the cheats, and the corrupt beings who 
take pleasure in shame and filth. Do you not 
see the absurdity of such a supposition? Could 
life go on, if men applied themselves to killing, 
lyin^, stealing, and degrading themselves? I 
do not suppose humanity would last a year 



50 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

should it conduct itself scrupulously and uni- 
versally on such principles. 

The truth is that the laws of life are not ar- 
bitrary. They are neither the result of the fan- 
tasy of man nor of a sort of capricious desire 
on the part of a God ruling according to his 
good pleasure. They are established in life it- 
self. There are laws for living as there are for 
building. Try to construct a bridge or a house 
with no attention to the laws of weight and equi- 
librium. These laws, to be sure, were discovered 
by men. The square and the plumb-line are of 
human origin. But masons and architects, in 
slowly acquiring the essential principles of their 
trade, have only followed nature and her fixed 
law. The time will never come when we may 
follow other laws, building without regard to 
the resistance of materials and to the perpendic- 
ular line. 

The laws of life, too, have been slowly evolved 
and brought to light. Even errors have taught 
men. He who falls and hurts himself asks 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 51 

himself why he fell, and grows more prudent. 
He who eats a poisonous fruit falls sick and 
thereafter lets that harmful food alone. Men 
have learned, through long and sorrowful expe- 
rience, that living a certain way was going the 
wrong road, and, the better to point the road, 
they have expressed in laws and regulations, the 
results of wisdom that has cost them dear. 
Likewise sailors, after long years of uncertain 
navigation, of accidents, and of shipwrecks, 
have created the system of signals and beacons 
you see along the coast. These signals and bea- 
cons, with their different colours, are a language 
the seaman comprehends. He knows that such 
a fire means : " Look out, there are rocks and 
shoals " ; that another fire means : " Look out 
for currents " ; and that finally that friendly 
light beyond is telling him : " Here is the right 
way." 



52 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 



SUMMING up, in connection with the 
laws of human life, what we have just 
said, let us draw a general conclusion 

from it. 

The law of a being depends upon what that 
being is, the faculties it contains, its organisa- 
tion, its structure, and its general character. 
To raise an animal, you must know about it. A 
bird does not live like a fish. A young lion re- 
quires a different diet from that of a young rab- 
bit. To know how a man should live, you must 
remember what he is and what he is worth. 
Man, having a nature that is corporeal, intel- 
lectual, and moral, is obliged to care for him- 
self under these three aspects, to neglect none 
of them, and to treat them according to their 
reciprocal value. There is a saying that it 
is first necessary for man to be a good ani- 
mal; and that is true. His body, neglected or 
weakened, becomes for him such a burden and 
such an encumbrance, that he can no longer pay 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 53 

attention to anything else. The best means for 
making the body a capable instrument for the 
service of the spirit, is to watch over it, to exer- 
cise it, to train it, to assure it, in a word, what 
we call health. 

The health of the mind depends, likewise, 
upon a careful and well-understood culture. 
Just as lack of cleanliness and of bodily care 
results in sickness, lack of intellectual culture 
gives rise to disorders. Ignorance, superstition, 
and all kinds of intellectual malady result from 
lack of culture. " A sound mind in a healthy 
body " is the way the ancients defined the con- 
dition of a normal man. But for a man to be 
well and to be wise is not enough. If his con- 
science is not enlightened, if his will is indirect- 
ed, if he has not formed his character, he runs 
the risk of putting to evil use his bodily vigour 
and mental capabilities. A wicked man is the 
much more dangerous the more he is robust and 
well-informed. We should, therefore, above 
everything else, nourish, fortify, and purify 



54 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

our conscience and our will, in order that what 
power we have acquired may be put to good use. 
And it is to do precisely this that we are put 
here. 



VII 



INDIVIDUAL MAN AND HIS LAW 



connection two rules dominate all conduct: 
Self-respect and self-control. 

FIRST, self-respect. In this matter we 
must distinguish between the degraded 
personal sentiment called pride, which 
we rightly condemn, and the requisite and nor- 
mal personal sentiment by which we feel that 
we are worth being somebody, worth asserting 
our separate special existence and its due. 
Pride affects a man absurdly, making him at- 
tach importance to the lowest phases of his be- 




ET us take up first the individual 
apart from his surroundings. Let 
us consider the way every one 
should act toward himself. In this 



56 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

ing, value himself according to his looks, his 
strength, his wealth, or his knowledge, have of 
himself an exaggerated opinion and take to him- 
self a place in the world ridiculously out of pro- 
portion. But we need not, therefore, conclude 
that a man should hold the meanest opinion of 
himself, should efface himself, and not have, so 
to speak, courage to be. Be some one;* God 
wishes it. Otherwise there would not be so 
many different natures and temperaments. We 
are created and put into the world to fulfil a 
function, and to accomplish an end. Every 
one has his own work to do, with the special ca- 
pacities for doing it, just as a bird has his own 
song, which he is supposed to sing rather than 
that of some other bird, a man has his own row 
to hoe ; and to do it, he must live his life, must 
steadily, firmly, and confidently be what he 
ought to be, without letting anything or any- 
body disconcert him. 

* " Dare to be" was the motto of that great and good 
man, Felix Pecant. 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 57 

A couplet from Victor Hugo expresses ad- 
mirably the simple quiet courage of being one's 
self in spite of risk or ridicule : 

<e In June, no smile embarrasses the rose 
From Jilting nature's duty to unclose." 

There is, then, a kind of pride we should re- 
spect, approve, and cultivate. Without it, we 
should be lacking in essential strength. The 
trouble with most of us is that we do not realise 
what we owe ourselves. To appear well, to ex- 
ert ourselves, to do well in business, we must 
necessarily think pretty well of ourselves. Our 
life is so big and mysterious that we could not 
keep over it a watch too minute nor guard too 
close. When girls of a holiday morning go out 
in their white dresses, how they avoid touching 
anything dirty, any dust, or whatever might 
soil their attire or mar its freshness ! Let us be 
as careful of our young lives, of our bodies and 
of our souls as our sisters are of their clean 
dresses; let us dread soiling ourselves, disgrac- 



58 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

ing ourselves or letting any habit get the better 
of us. 

Some men have so keen a sense of family hon- 
our, that the mere name they bear keeps them 
from misconduct. Where is the family older or 
more venerable than the great human family in 
which we are children? Or what name is there 
worthier than man's, the child of God? 

We must bear it with sacred respect. For it 
denotes the most priceless thing in the world. 
The Gospel says : " What does it avail a man 
if he gain the whole world and lose his own 
soul? " That means that the poorest, the most 
unfortunate, the most friendless of us is worth 
more than all the gold, all the riches, all the 
kings' crowns, and all the stars of the heavens. 
Man will never search these words deeply 
enough. If he understood them, no humble sit- 
uation could abase him, no tyranny could sub- 
due him, no misfortune could break his courage, 
no base temptation of interest or vulgar pleas- 
ure could corrode him. 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 59 



MAN ought not only respect him- 
self, but govern himself. The 
second law that extends to all our 
thoughts and all our actions is the law of mod- 
eration. 

Moderation consists in applying a sense of 
proportion to our needs, our desires, our words, 
and all the manifestations of our existence. 

Man has been given the faculty of directing 
his actions himself. But he learns to exercise 
it only gradually. At first he is pretty unruly, 
inordinate, and unrestrained. Innate passion 
carries him toward his desire or his whim; and 
his state of being a free creature often makes 
him inferior to the beasts that are guided and 
checked by instinct. It is here that definite 
limits must be set up, of reserve and prudence, 
of that equilibrium, in short, which consists in 
not overstepping bounds. There is nothing 
more difficult, at certain moments of enthusiasm, 
than to stop. Effort to succeed in this point 



60 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

signifies wisdom and nobility. Unfortunately, 
the majority of human beings have never 
learned to govern themselves. They are the 
sport of their appetites, and time after time let 
themselves be carried away in all sorts of di- 
rections, far from what one would consider the 
right course for a reasonable being. We must 
learn in good season to order our life and our 
desires; and however difficult it be to regulate 
our natural appetites, we must accomplish it, 
or no longer merit the title of man. A man is 
no reed, pliant to any wind, or letting himself be 
borne along like a dead leaf on the violence of 
his impressions. A man worthy to be so called 
is a disciplined will, accustomed to conform him- 
self to law, and to be moderate, temperate, and 
sober in all things. 

Yet the care of his body and of his mind, all 
the trouble he takes to watch over his health, to 
exercise his physical strength, to forge ahead, 
to cultivate his intelligence and his conscience, 
to assert himself, and to form his character, are 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 61 



only the beginning of his work. The end of 
man is not to strengthen and perfect himself 
for his own glory, or advantage; the end of 
man is to develop his body and brain as much as 
possible, in order finally to be of service to his 
fellow-men. 



VIII 

SOCIETY AND ITS LAW 

WHEN we start to reflect on the life 
of man, we soon see that each of 
us is nothing by himself. He 
but exists and continues by 
means of ties that bind him to other men. 

These ties are very many: some are visible 
and potent, others lie hidden. We speak of 
them under the general name of solidarity. 



FIRST of all there is the family tie. 
What is man when he enters into life? 
A pitiable being, without beauty, with- 
out speech, ignorant of everything, even of his 
existence, without power to move an object or 
take hold of it. Though you might put cloth- 
ing and food near him he would perish of cold 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 63 



and hunger, not knowing how to make use of 
them. 

We owe our existence to our parents in a 
double sense. Our mothers not only bring us 
into the world, but their kind, deft hands pro- 
vide us with the indispensable facilities we can- 
not yet exercise. 

These incessant attentions, thanks to which 
our bodies live, are not all we receive. We are 
bred in tenderness, our minds and our hearts 
awaken under our mother's kiss. As we drink 
the milk, we absorb the life round about. Any 
one who had forgotten would need but to notice 
a baby in its development. Through his sense 
of imitation, the little child is literally suckled 
by his surroundings. He adopts the language, 
the accent, the ways of thinking, the gestures, 
the local customs: a man comes forth from his 
family as fruit from a tree. How blind he 
would be after that, were he willing to forget 
it all, in thinking only of himself ! 



64 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 



AFTER family solidarity comes national 
solidarity. The little family in which 
we grow up has prepared us for the 
large one which is our fatherland. The family 
leads to our country as the brook leads to the 
river. The first impressions attaching us to our 
country are those of childhood, the memories of 
home and the native soil. Our country is the 
" Fatherland," and we belong to it through our 
particular fathers and ancestors. 

Patriotism, as it first appears, is local. It is 
made up of all the tender memories that attach 
a man to the corner of the earth whence he came, 
and to the faces that surrounded his childhood. 
However spiritual our feelings may be, they al- 
ways fasten themselves to some visible object. 
Thus the sentiment of patriotism binds itself in 
our minds to certain clear images which conjure 
up our native land. It may be the sight of a 
village or of meadows, a forest, mountains, or 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 65 

the sea-shore. Whether the land be rich or poor, 
insignificant or majestic, memories of youth lend 
it a charm nowhere else to be found. The lands 
best loved by their children are very often 
rough and barren. 

As a boy grows up, his horizon recedes, the 
boundaries of his narrow country, formerly 
ended by a hill or a river, stretch out. It is then 
we learn that the beloved spot so familiar to us, 
where we have left our footprints, and carved 
our name on the bark of trees, is part of a num- 
ber of like territories, and constitutes with them 
a vast whole : the country. That country has a 
history which is told us ; we learn what strug- 
gles, what far-away events, have made way for 
things as they are. The names of its heroes 
ring in our memories, are sung on our lips. We 
come to know the thought and the work of fel- 
low-citizens who have lived before us. Their 
glories and their defeats, their sufferings and 
their successes touch us, and thus we conceive 



66 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

affection for the whole idea of a great national 
life. When it is genuine, patriotism becomes a 
source of inspiration and activity. Love of 
country sustains us in our daily work, whatever 
that be. Choose any honourable task you wish, 
however humble it be, the prosperity, the honour, 
and the reputation of your country are directly 
concerned in your performing it to the best of 
your ability. A country's future is intrusted 
not only to its skilful diplomats, to its artists 
of great talent, to its captains of industry, and 
to its heroic soldiers. It means more to a coun- 
try to have good workmen, good seamen, indus- 
trious farmers, honest shopkeepers, faithful ser- 
vants, and studious children than to have great 
generals and ministers, scholars, and teachers of 
note. Every one in his place must do his duty, 
and be mindful of his country if national life is 
to be sound and vigorous. 

Patriotism impels us to respect public order, 
national laws and institutions. At the same 
time, it fills us with goodwill toward our fellow- 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 67 



citizens, regardless of political, social, or relig- 
ious distinction. 

Let us take good care not to confuse true pa- 
triotism with that narrow, sectarian sentiment 
that decorates itself with the name of patriotism 
and consists chiefly in a prejudice against for- 
eigners with no increase in brotherliness or tol- 
eration among our own people. Just as true 
patriotism is like wholesome natural wine, pas- 
sionate, blustering patriotism is like artificial 
wine that has never seen a vineyard. 



human solidarity. Much as a man is connected 
with the social body, each country is connected 
to humanity. One country could not isolate it- 
self and take no interest in the others. Nations 




68 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

are contiguous at their frontiers, and be they 
rivals or enemies, have common interests. 

Each country is concerned in living at peace 
with its neighbours, and especially, whether they 
are friendly or unfriendly, in knowing about 
them in order to keep in touch with their 
thought and their activity. Let us never be led, 
by a misconception of patriotism, to despise a 
foreigner, to be ignorant of his manner of liv- 
ing, of working, and of preparing for the 
future. It is through patriotism that many ex- 
cellent citizens give themselves up to learning 
foreign languages, to leaving their country in 
order to inform themselves of outside customs, 
and bring back to their home land the fruit of 
their labour and experiences. 

Beyond all these considerations, moreover, 
good as they are in themselves, there is one that 
should induce us to take our part in what is 
happening beyond national frontiers: I mean 
that higher brotherly interest, that greatest con- 
cern of all, which every man, because he is a 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 69 

man, should feel in the destinies of his fellows. 
It is simply and beautifully expressed by one of 
the ancients : " I am a man, and nothing hu- 
man is foreign to me." 



IX 



RESULTS OF SOLIDARITY 
OBEDIENCE 

WE have just traced the broad frame- 
work of life in society. Let us 
now go over several of the prin- 
ciples that should guide us in it. 
The first of these, which appears especially 
to concern childhood, but really pertains, in a 
different way, to the whole of life, is obedience. 
It consists in conforming ourselves to the laws 
of the community in which we belong. 

Let us first speak of obedience as it presents 
itself to all of us at the beginning of our career. 

It is a rather unsympathetic subject, I know. 
It does not excite curiosity or provoke enthu- 
siasm. When we are young we would rather 
70 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 71 

hear surprising stories, listen to the descrip- 
tion of distant countries, of peculiar animals, 
of exotic plants, or of strange adventures, than 
have our attention invited to obedience. 

Could we not dispense with obedience? Is it 
not much more agreeable to do what we please? 
Why, when we are little, do grown people put 
us under such a yoke? These are the practical 
questions with which we have to deal. 

I shall begin by telling you that grown peo- 
ple did not invent obedience through spite or 
through a spirit of domination. It is the result 
of necessity. 

When you wish to go into an unknown coun- 
try, for example, without the risk of being lost 
any minute, you must follow a guide who knows 
the way. Life, for a child, is an unknown coun- 
try, in which he has need of a guide. Obe- 
dience is letting others show us the way. Our 
natural guides are our parents, or the teachers 
to whom our parents delegate their authority. 
We who have come recently and without expe- 



72 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

rience into a family, cannot be allowed to disor- 
der the household, to compromise our health 
and our future, and attack the general interests 
of the family, by going on such adventures as 
we please. I suppose nothing in the world is 
simpler in theory. 

In practice it is another thing. 

Why should it be so difficult to obey, when 
obedience, in short, is natural? 

Let us try to account for that. Let us think 
a minute. 

If we had no will, we would go, at a signal, 
to the right, to the left, forward, and backward, 
like a machine; our motions would follow a cer- 
tain given order, like those of a jumping- jack 
following a thread. But we have a personal 
will. It is one of the most precious things we 
possess. This will, though, begins by being 
blind. It follows, haphazard and with great 
force, the first impulse that comes. The less en- 
lightened the reason, the more opinionated is 
the will. This is what happens with a child 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 73 

He wants a thing absolutely ; he becomes infat- 
uated with it. Refuse him; order him to take 
something else, and his will enters into a strug- 
gle with yours. There is a collision; and the 
collision is sometimes very unpleasant. 

Education consists in enlightening, directing, 
and disciplining our will, not in breaking it. 
We might compare ourselves, for instance, to 
young colts, whose petulance is a good deal like 
the vivacity of our young spirits. The educa- 
tion of a spirited horse does not consist in break- 
ing his legs, putting out his eyes, and then say- 
ing : " Now, you are conquered and perfectly 
quiet." It does consist in making him, with the 
proper means, and little by little, tamer and 
more tractable, so that his strength may not be 
foolishly and harmfully wasted in kicking, but 
spent in steady and useful efforts. 

Obedience is either easy or difficult, as we un- 
derstand or do not understand why we obey. 
The reason ought willingly to be explained to 
us; but that is not always possible. Sometimes 



74 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

there is not time, and often, too, we are too 
young to understand. In that case we must 
obey without understanding. Listen to this 
story which will explain what I mean. 

A man employed by a railroad as switchman 
was at his post to turn the switch so that a fast 
train might pass on the instant into the station. 

Suddenly he saw running toward him twenty 
paces away, his five-year-old son, who was cross- 
ing the track without noticing the train. If 
the man left his post, he would cause a collision 
that would kill many people; but if he stayed, 
his child would be killed. 

In that fearful extremity, he cried to the 
child with all his might : " Lie down on the 
ground! 99 Instantly the child obeyed, and the 
express passed over him without harming a hair. 
He was saved ; had he asked why, he would have 
been lost. 

Let us look at obedience as an indispensable 
barrier. Is it to vex and oppose us that para- 
pets are put on bridges, balustrades on balco- 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 75 

nies, hand-rails around precipices? We know 
these are for our good. Let us put a little good- 
will into our comprehension of the necessity of 
obedience; that will turn our foolish heads to 
docility and thought. 

The entire rule of life is contained for chil- 
dren in the fifth commandment': " Honour thy 
father and thy mother." Those who will not 
obey are like the bough that will not remain 
attached to the trunk, and receive its sap: they 
are destined to wither and dry up. 

OBEDIENCE is often made difficult to 
a child by the sight of the lives of 
grown people who, according to him, 
" do what they please." Just as a poor man 
most resents his misery when he sees the luxury 
and pleasures of the rich. 

But it is an error, and a great one, to think 
that grown people do as they please. No one 
does as he pleases. Some obey their passions 
and their appetites : these are the worst grade of 



76 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

slaves. Others obey reason, duty, and con- 
science : they are the truly free. It is to a place 
among the latter that we should aspire. To 
reach it, we must learn to yield ourselves, as chil- 
dren, to the respectable and intelligent will of 
our parents. While we are young and ignorant 
of the laws of life, they are our law. They 
stand in the place of conscience to us, so long 
as our own is unassured. In respecting them, 
we are preparing to respect later the advice of 
our conscience, when law, at first an outside in- 
fluence, shall have become an inside influence. 
Respect is a keen sense of the value of men and 
things. It is always a part of a good man's 
every thought. Rascals, criminals, lunatics, 
and evil-workers, have no knowledge of respect. 
For them, nothing is venerable or sacred. 
They are like a brutish wild boar that ravages 
a beautiful garden, tears up the seeds with his 
snout, tramples the frail sprouts, and rolls 
among the dainty blossoms. 

Respect takes nothing from our stature. 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 77 

Do you think that in bowing modestly to an old 
man as you pass him, or to a distinguished citi- 
zen, you have sacrificed a part of your dignity? 
On the contrary, in bowing to him you have 
added to your stature. In knowing what is hon- 
ourable, you do yourself honour: failing in re- 
spect where it is due, you do yourself dishon- 
our. The lowest of human beings is he who 
has no respect for anything or anybody : he has 
descended so abjectly far that he has no longer 
even a sense of what is beautiful, noble, and ex- 
alted, or of what deserves admiration, enthu- 
siasm, and reverence. 

We recognise now the pure, strong feeling 
that makes a man bend his head to a worthy law. 
Let us go along farther and look at others of 
the laws which point like guide-posts toward 
good and upright living. 



X 



BE TRUE 




IRST comes the law of truth. To 



live together, men must be able con- 
fidently to count upon one another. 
When confidence begins to fail, all 



relations are disturbed; that is so true that even 



are expected to practise a sort of honesty 
among themselves. If a brigand mistrusts his 
accomplice, what becomes of the band? It is 
soon divided, betrayed, discovered, and surren- 
dered to the police. 

Men in society are like stones in the arch 
of a bridge. If the stones are displaced, fail- 
ing in their promise of solidity, the bridge col- 
lapses, and, falling with it, everything is lost 
that depends on its soundness — men, horses, and 
the passing train. 



brigands and thieves, when they form a band, 



78 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 79 

Truth is the ground under our feet. You 
have heard people tell of the terror that strikes 
into everything alive at the times of earthquake. 
The earth is a firm foundation. We have 
learned to look on it as secure. When men 
walk or build on it, they have the feeling that it 
will not move, and when it begins to tremble, 
there is nothing that abides. The oldest walls 
crack and tremble; the roof falls on the heads 
it should protect; abysses open at our feet to 
engulf us. Then all is up, and even the cour- 
ageous lose heart. On what can we count if 
the earth crumbles and is gone? In the moral 
world, the earth on which we build is truth. 

To be true to others, we must begin by being 
true to ourselves. The human heart is the cen- 
tre of action. From a deceitful heart can come 
only trickery and falsehood. 

For the human soul, truth is frankness, sin- 
cerity. It is a disposition to be upright, and 
kindly loyal toward others. 

As a general rule, man begins by being frank. 



80 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

At the same time he is trusting. In early life, 
we do not understand simulation, and distrust 
is unknown to us. When we lose frankness, 
confidence goes too. He who is frank believes 
others to be frank, and he who hides his feel- 
ings and tries to deceive people easily believes 
that they are trying to deceive him. The liar 
suspects everybody; that is one of his punish- 
ments. 

How does the child who does not know how 
to hide how he feels, happen to become shy and 
deceitful? 

If we look back for the cause of our first 
falsehoods, we shall see that they were often in- 
vented to cover up misdeeds and avoid their dis- 
agreeable results. Often, too, falsehood takes 
that seductive and agreeable form called flat- 
tery. Its end, then, is to gain the goodwill 
of those to whom it is addressed: remember the 
fable of the fox and the crow. 

Alas, it is not always to avoid punishment, 
or to obtain advantages, or to piece out boast- 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 81 

fill tales, that we descend to falsehood. Too 
often it serves as a weapon to wound and mor- 
ally to kill one's neighbour: it is then called 
slander and is calumny. 



SLANDER is a certain skill in discovering 
and exploiting the foibles of others. It 
sees the ridiculous and defective sides of 
a man, and brings them into relief. Of his 
good qualities, it never speaks. To picture only 
our faults is to wrong us. Every one of us 
has faults. If, in speaking of us, you show 
only those, you are lying. I may have a black 
spot on my face, but that spot is not my whole 
face. Caricatures are not portraits. 

The world is full of people who take a vicious 
delight in laying stress on anybody's worst fea- 
tures. Such people are often very witty and 
amusing. One laughs involuntarily in listening 
to their talk. But it is an unhealthy and in- 
advisable diversion. Slander not only causes its 
victim suffering; it serves ill those who lend an 



82 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

ear to it. They get used to this sad distortion 
of human nature, and finally believe that that 
is the only way it exists. Let us be just; let 
us be true. Let us prefer to look for the good 
and to mark it well. Let it please us to find 
at least one virtue, where there seem only faults. 
That will be worth more to us than adroitly re- 
marking imperfections, and keeping carefully 
silent about good qualities. 

SLANDER is imposture ; but there is some- 
thing worse than that: I have called it 
calumny. 

Calumny invents, out of whole cloth, things 
about people that are absolutely false. While 
slander is often bold, and appears in plain day- 
light, calumny creeps, hides, and conceals its 
identity. Those who peddle it use such for- 
mulas as these : " They say " ; " the story 
goes "; " could it be true that? " — , etc. But 
no one knows whence the story comes, or cares 
about knowing. Often the very people who 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 83 

have invented it say : " I can scarcely believe it, 
but this is what they are saying about such 
and such a one. Don't give me away, keep this 
to yourself, and, above all, don't tell anybody 
that you had it from me." 

The bearer of calumny is the coward par 
excellence. He attacks from behind and in the 
dark. To fight an enemy in front of you, how- 
ever terrible it may be, gives you, at least, a 
fighting chance. But to receive blows without 
knowing whence they come, to be accused with- 
out knowing by whom, often not even of what, 
and without being able to answer and defend 
yourself, — truly people must be pretty vile and 
criminal of soul to occasion fellow-creatures such 
anguish. 

THERE is still another name for false- 
hood, when it permeates one's entire 
life: hypocrisy. 
The hypocrite is the false, masked being 
whose gestures and actions are all pretences. 



84 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

He hides vice under a show of virtue, hatred 
under the mantle of love, impiety under the as- 
pect of religion. Hypocrisy must be a very 
subtle, formidable kind of evil, that Christ, who 
was all gentleness and pardon, and understood 
so well the infirmities of our poor nature, should 
point it out with so relentless a severity. 

We have not finished describing the various 
kinds of falsehood. It would be easier to count 
the fishes of the sea or the birds of the forest 
than to catalogue all the varieties of this hid- 
eous vice. 

We are appalled at the numerous forms of 
falsehood and their results; at all the untruth 
that is spoken, written, printed, or taught. 
Falsehood seems to us like an immense fortress, 
guarded by a numberless throng, all armed with 
every conceivable weapon, and we ask ourselves 
if truth has a single chance in this world of 
prevailing. 

If it were necessary for truth and justice to 
shine forth, that the majority of men might 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 85 

consent to speak the truth, we should have rea- 
son to be discouraged, for, unfortunately, the 
number of those who lie is very great, and thus 
arise many of the doubts and disasters of life. 
We deceive one another and change the earth 
into an uninhabitable place. In some countries, 
they say : " Ah, what a fine place to live in ! 
What a marvellous climate ! It would be a para- 
dise, were it not full of snakes." We should be 
right in thus speaking of the earth. Men would 
live in peace, were they not liars, or perjurers, 
and did not their dishonesty, their deceit, and 
their evil and perfidious tongues, like so many 
vipers and scorpions, scatter everywhere death 
and desolation. 



TRUTH, however, does not lose its au- 
thority. Falsehood is a colossal 
force; truth is even stronger. I 
shall try to prove this statement by a very sim- 
ple example. 

Suppose that I am very strong indeed, and 



86 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

that I have a business transaction with a little 
child to whom I owe a thousand francs. 

I lay on the table before him a five-franc piece 
and a sou, and I ask him their names. He tells 
me : " The large white piece is five francs, or 
one hundred sous ; the little red one is a sou, five 
centimes, one hundred times less." 

Now, for my own interest, I wish him to think 
the contrary of this. I have a thousand francs 
to pay him, and it serves my purpose to tell 
the child that the reddish pieces are worth one 
hundred sous. I repeat to him, as I count out 
one hundred sou pieces : " Two hundred times 
five francs are a thousand francs. There, you 
are paid." 

Here is a crying injustice. The child cannot 
deny it. What does that prove? Merely that 
I am the stronger, not that I am right, and 
nothing is really changed. Each of the sous 
I gave remains a sou. Whoever sees them will 
say : " Those are only sous." Suppose that I 
support my claim by joining with other strong, 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 87 

armed liars. We gather a company, terrorise 
everybody, attack and make prisoners of all who 
will not say that one sou is a hundred. After 
all this violence, a sou will still be a sou. Let 
us put the question to the people. Let an entire 
nation, by its votes, declare that one sou is a 
hundred sous. Nothing more would be accom- 
plished. No power on earth, neither emperor, 
nor pope, nor crowd of howling people, could 
change it. By taking the necessary time and 
trouble, you may lower hills and raise valleys, 
but you cannot make a sou anything else than 
a sou. To lie is to attempt the impossible. 

Here appears the power of truth against 
falsehood. To tell the truth is to say what is 
and what is not. A child who tells the truth 
is stronger than a man who lies. A poor man 
who tells the truth is richer than a powerful, 
celebrated rich man who lies. 

A dead man who told the truth is stronger 
than the hundreds and thousands of living men 
who tried to kill with him the truth that he 
defended. 



88 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

Persecution has followed truthful men who 
have devoted themselves to patient study and 
to long research that they might discover cer- 
tain laws of nature. You all know that Galileo 
was imprisoned because he insisted that the 
earth revolves, and there were people whom that 
idea annoyed. They even succeeded, by prom- 
ises and threats, in making him deny his con- 
viction. After his retraction, the poor man, 
with his head in his hands, cried out : " It does 
move, for all that." 

Yes, it moves, and in vain men write or print 
that it does not. To what does it amount to 
forbid teaching that it turns, or to say that he 
who thinks so is an impostor? To nothing, for 
what is not, is not. Galileo, who says that the 
earth turns, is right against all the doctors, tra- 
ditions, and millions of men who maintain the 
contrary. You know that man can neither cre- 
ate nor destroy a grain of sand. Neither by 
fire, nor by the pestle, nor by dynamite, can 
an atom be destroyed, nor can the most skilful 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 89 

chemist ever make a molecule out of nothing. 
You cannot destroy a fact by substituting an- 
other for it. What has happened, has hap- 
pened. No one will ever abolish a fact by 
repeating that it has not happened. 

We need know nothing more to serve truth 
courageously. Her day will come: against the 
truth, no force can prevail. Let us be truthful 
men, servants of truth. 

Man is a witness. A witness should not con- 
sult his preferences, but should tell what he has 
seen. No one is greater than a man who, be- 
fore whatever power, or in whatever danger, tells 
only what he knows, without adding to it or 
retrenching it, even to glorify a good cause. 
To desire to serve a good cause by forcing one's 
testimony, by exaggerating or detracting from 
the facts to make them more conclusive, is to 
try to serve truth by falsehood, like feeding a 
man his own brain to strengthen him. Your 
speech should be yes, yes ; no, no, and, once 
spoken, it will become like a granite monument 



90 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

fixed in the earth. Keep your promises ; honour 
your engagements. Let the people say of you, 
" One man ; one word." He is not a man, who 
has none; but a changing misleading phantom, 
that vanishes at touch or pressure. 

If we knew the strength, the nobility, the 
beauty, and the benefit of truth, we would cleave 
to it, as the ivy to the oak. 

Truth is the salvation of the world. It is 
the friend of all, even of whom it strikes. 
Wounds made by truth heal and cleanse; ca- 
resses of falsehood poison and kill. If we love 
fellow-men, friends, countrymen, or family, let 
us always tell them the truth. To lie to any 
one, even to be agreeable, is to treat him as an 
enemy; it is equivalent to giving him false 
money for true, poison for food. 

Let us honour truth by serving it cheerfully. 
If it is possible to smile, let us not speak 
it sharply, or with a scowling face. Many bear 
truth like those awkward porters, who cannot 
move along with their burdens without hitting 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 91 

foreheads, staving in eyes, or trampling the feet 
of pedestrians. Do not be like them. Do not 
serve truth with " a face too imperiously ma- 
jestic," as Montaigne says. To serve truth 
rightly, and to make it agreeable to those who 
hear us, let us choose scrupulously our time and 
our words. Let us try to unite to truth, tact 
and propriety, benevolence and charity. 



XI 



RESPECT LIFE 

LIFE is the wonder of wonders. Man 
can neither create it nor understand 
it, though he may have a harmful 
or a salutary influence over it. 
The greatest harm one may do life is to 
destroy it, but of that it seems that only a 
coward or a criminal would be capable. That 
is a mistake. One does not need to have par- 
ticularly ferocious instincts to destroy life. He 
needs but to forget to watch over himself. 

We notice that man, from youth up, has a 
perverse tendency called the instinct of destruc- 
tion, which manifests itself in many cruel and 
destructive actions. It begins very young in 
those whose chief joy is to break or destroy. 
To them, trampling on a flower, tearing out a 
92 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 93 

shrub by the roots, or plundering a garden, is 
a treat. You tell me that a crushed flower does 
not suffer. Possibly; but a flower is a master- 
piece of art and grace. Something in it is from 
the One who made the world. To destroy it 
for the pleasure of destruction is a sign of 
boorishness and stupidity, as well as an offence 
to the Creator. It is always unjust to destroy 
the fruit of labour. 

Moreover, in crushing unregretfully a deli- 
cate corolla, you are growing hard-hearted. 
You will not be satisfied, soon, to strike down, 
as you pass, the lily of the pool or the rose of 
the hedge; you will want to torture living be- 
ings, who cry out with pain. 

When you have torn little birds from their 
nests, mutilated a toad, tormented a dog, or 
beaten a donkey, you will pass to your fellow- 
men, and it will seem more refreshing to you 
to torture them. 

The murderer lies sleeping in us. Beware! 

Do not say that so long as you attack only 



94 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

birds and beasts, it is nothing, — it is the pre- 
liminary exercise that carries you away ; the first 
weapon that prepares you for future exploits. 

My children, you may think that I exag- 
gerate in speaking of the murderer asleep 
in you. Would you be taken for a criminal? 
Is it worth while to say to you : " Thou shalt 
not kill " ? 

Yes, it is, for to do murder is not only shed- 
ding blood, piercing hearts with a poniard, or 
beating a man to death with a club. To spoil 
another's life is often as wicked as to take it 
from him, and we should be cautioned on this 
point. 

Each one of us, in a certain measure, holds 
in his hands the happiness or the health of 
others. 

You may exercise an evil influence over the 
health of your comrades, by setting them a bad 
example, leading them to evil, making them un- 
dergo bad treatment or injustice. Tell me, are 
there not many school-children whom the mock- 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 95 

ery and foolish tricks of their comrades have 
reduced to a laughing-stock? 

You may also, by disobeying them, exciting 
them to anger, causing them cares and annoy- 
ances, compromise seriously the health and the 
life of your parents and teachers. How many 
children have never thought of that? Yet those 
who die by the hands of assassins are only a 
comparatively small number, compared to those 
who die slowly, worn out and tormented by 
vexation and trouble. 

Some men are made so miserable by the con- 
duct of their fellows that death would be pref- 
erable to the life they have to lead. 

We may, again, fail in the respect due to life 
by neglecting our duties of vigilance and pro- 
fessional diligence. Take, for example, the coach- 
man who sleeps at his post, the merchant who 
sells spoiled goods, the editor who spreads false 
news or excites men to hatred. Laziness and 
intemperance often prevent a man from attend- 
ing to his duty, and so incur loss for those who 
trusted him. 



96 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

Human existence, in short, is forever menaced, 
less by professional murderers, than by those 
whose wickedness, ignorance, or thoughtlessness 
has become a destructive force. One might al- 
most say with certainty that all the malevolent 
actions of mankind tend, by their consequences, 
to the ruin of human life. And if there is so 
much suffering and misery in the world, it is 
not an inevitable consequence of our destiny, as 
God has fixed it, but the result of our own faults. 
I shall only cite as an example the ravages of 
alcoholism. In giving himself up to the alcohol 
habit, a man has fixed upon himself a legion 
of plagues, infirmities, maladies, and mental and 
spiritual disorders. 

LET us stop here. Having enumerated 
the misfortunes we may cause in life, 
let us look at the good we may do 
there. As a counterpoise to the instinct of de- 
struction, we carry in our souls a kind and help- 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 97 

ful feeling, which takes pleasure in seeing life 
develop, and in protecting it against its enemies. 
Thanks to this happy disposition, life is inter- 
esting to us. An unfolding seed; a blade of 
grass, piercing through the ground, and, for 
the first time, looking upon the sun ; the young 
bird just hatched, frail and unfledged, are all 
subjects of observation and wonder to us. This 
interest in nascent life is met with in the lovely 
face of a child: 

" Opening wide his young soul to life, 
And his mouth to kisses." 

V. Hugo. 

It is clear that this lively and passionate in- 
terest must be roused when we see life threatened 
or endangered. What we feel then is called 
Pity, which seizes us, not only at the sight of 
the griefs of our fellows, but may even be 
awakened by a poor wounded animal, or by a 
flower crushed by the tempest. Have you never 
straightened the broken stalk of a flower, or re- 
planted an uprooted shrub? What pleasure 



98 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

you felt when the flower revived, or the bush 
regained its strength! These emotions are 
naturally stronger when the injured one is an 
active being, who, by his gestures or his cries, 
makes signs of distress. What more striking 
picture of anguish could there be than that of 
a kitten in the water, or a bird falling at your 
feet with a broken wing! Who would not be 
touched by the sight? With what eagerness 
you pick it up, put it in a safe place, bandage 
it, care for it ! No trouble matters to you. Ah, 
if you could only save it! When you do this, 
my children, you are living on the highest side 
of your nature. 

The more the suffering creature resembles us, 
the more we can feel and comprehend its griefs, 
and the more our pity is moved. But if pity 
is not to remain fruitless, if it is to result in 
relieving distress, and in combating evil in the 
world, a man should set himself to enlighten it 
and turn it into sensible activity. Every one 
may feel compassion ; every one is not capable of 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 99 

bringing relief or care to sufferers. All the hu- 
man faculties need to be educated in order to 
bear fruit. Let us join to pity the study, the 
exercise, and the habitual practice of mercy. 

Simple prudence teaches us that man, exposed 
by destiny to all sorts of troubles, ought to ac- 
custom himself to caring for and relieving these 
troubles. To be something of a nurse is not a 
talent of luxury, but rather an accomplishment 
of the greatest necessity. From childhood, let 
us accustom ourselves to being useful to the 
sick and the infirm. Let us lend our eyes to 
the blind, our feet to the paralytic ; let us carry 
the burdens of poor old folks who have a hard 
time to carry even themselves. The child who 
does this will not grow into the man who goes 
on his way without noticing the suffering beside 
him. 

You are mistaken in thinking that some 
knowledge of certain misery will trouble or spoil 
the serenity of youth; it is not those who are 
unsensitive, lost in egotism, closing their souls 



Lof C. 



100 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

to the sufferings of others, who know joy in its 
purest and profoundest forms. The most in- 
tense joy that a man can feel is that which 
comes from having relieved a trouble, and you 
can do a great deal, in fact, if only by your 
frank face and your happy smile, to soften the 
sufferings of others. Do not fail to do it; you 
shall see how happy it will make you. If you 
may, conveniently, begin early to care for the 
sick, to repair the damages done by certain ac- 
cidents, you should also serve the apprenticeship 
of kindness, as I call it, by learning to under- 
stand and to relieve moral suffering. Hardly 
any one is exempt from pain. All have their lot 
of trouble. Some are even wounded to the heart 
for life, as others are wounded in body. With 
these, especially, remember a simple counsel that 
a wise man has given us : " Be good, my child." 
Conduct yourself so that your behaviour may 
do good to those who are in affliction, and your 
presence may comfort them. No provision is as 
necessary along the way of life as that of ten- 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 101 

derness that consoles wounded hearts. Let us 
cherish that provision, giving of it to every man 
who suffers. Let us not be clouded souls, en- 
veloped in the cold vapours of egotism, but sun- 
shiny souls, to whom men will come to warm 
themselves. 



XII 



DEFEND YOURSELF: DO NOT AVENGE 
YOURSELF 

A SUBJECT which has the most di- 
rect connection with respect for 
life is that of defence. Should 
we defend ourselves? Sometimes 
we say no, appealing to the saying, " If a man 
strike thee on thy right cheek, offer to him thy 
left also," or this, " Resist not evil." We need 
but reflect a moment to understand that these 
words apply to particular cases, and may not 
be considered as a general rule. 

It is better, in some cases, to defend yourself 
by resignation and silence, for by using other 
means, you run the risk of augmenting the evil. 

This kind of conduct, however, is not always 
practicable. The best skeleton key does not 

102 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 103 

open every door, and the best rule does not ap- 
ply to all circumstances. 

Every one knows that Christ spoke the words 
quoted above, and He, Himself, has shown that 
they are not an absolute law. Sometimes, when 
He was accused, He kept silence ; sometimes, He 
replied. Often, too, He was the first to attack, 
and then He said words that struck to the very 
heart. 

Before the great Council, a Roman soldier 
struck Him in the face. If Christ had replied 
to the blow by presenting the other cheek, He 
would have provoked the unfortunate soldier to 
commit two crimes instead of one. If He had 
retaliated by returning the blow, we should not 
have recognised Him. What did He do? He 
spoke the soldier firmly and gently, attributing 
his act to ignorance. He took the trouble to en- 
lighten one conscience. Here are the words of 
His reply : " If I have spoken evil, bear witness 
of the evil; if I have spoken well, why smitest 
thou me ? 99 That is defending one's self in the 
right way. 



104 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

For an evil blow, Christ returned good in a 
just and reasonable answer. Yet, He defended 
Himself. 

ONE should defend himself; it is a right, 
and even a duty. But here difficul- 
ties arise. How is it to be done? 
That is a great question. Most men defend 
themselves badly. An offence awakens in them 
bitter f eelings and violent passions that they try 
to satisfy. They then add a new injustice to 
that done them, by rendering evil for evil. 
Their method of defence aggravates the dam- 
age, instead of repairing it. All of us, in a 
word, avenge ourselves, instead of defending 
ourselves. Now, vengeance no more resembles 
defence, than the bear of the woods resembles the 
wonderful constellation of the Great Bear that 
we see in the sky on clear nights. 

To limit the thirst for vengeance, it was said 
in the Law of Retaliation : " An eye for an eye, 
a tooth for a tooth." This seems brutal. But it 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 105 

is just, and even moderate, compared with the 
excess to which a man is carried by vengeance. 
Some are so possessed by the demon of revenge, 
that for one eye put out, they would crush both 
of their adversary's, and break the whole jaw 
of one who had knocked out a tooth. Human re- 
venge is insatiable : the brute stops himself ; man 
keeps on. Let us watch over our hearts, my chil- 
dren. We believe ourselves lambs, but let come 
a real offence, or an outrageous injury, and the 
frightful beast in us awakens. How it dashes 
out and roars ! 

There are places in some mountainous coun- 
tries where the echo repeats its sound many times. 
When a gun is shot off the rocks send it back 
and forth a hundred times, it rolls and increases 
across deep gorges, and when you think it has 
at last died away, a heavy, prolonged rumbling 
warns you that it is still going on. Many hu- 
man hearts resemble these echoes. An offence 
reverberates in them with unheard-of violence, 
strikes the most hidden folds, and throws them 



106 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

into an agitation that nothing can calm. Oth- 
ers are less violent, but have a tenacious power 
of resentment. Their malice is not assuaged: 
they forget nothing; they bide their time, com- 
bine their forces, and throw themselves on their 
adversaries, as the serpent on its prey. 

Here, then, is an important point of conduct, 
which we should remember well: let us defend, 
but not avenge ourselves. To do this, let us be 
masters of ourselves ; let passion give way to rea- 
son ; let us remain men in defending ourselves. 

Listen to this little comparison: 

When an ugly dog attacks you in the street, 
what do you do? To give him a reasonable ex- 
hortation or to make an appeal to his sense of 
justice, would be lost pains. But are you go- 
ing to bark and bite as he does, making yourself 
exactly his equal? Will you shoot him needless- 
ly? No. You will make skilful use of your 
good stick, and, with a vigorous blow on his 
paws, you will send him to his kennel. He at- 
tacked you like a bad dog; you defended your- 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 107 

self like a man, but like a man who knows that 
he is defending himself from only a bad 
dog. 

To defend yourself, you must use the most 
practical and convenient means, beginning with 
the least violent. You have no need of using 
at once the strongest means at your disposal. 
That would be firing a cannon to kill a mosquito, 
and you would not even be sure of succeeding. 

Gentleness is often a good weapon of defence. 
Do you recall the fable of the sun and the wind ? 
These two powers had made a wager as to which 
of them could the sooner remove the coat of a 
traveller going along the road. The wind blew 
furiously upon him, but the harder it raged the 
closer the man drew his coat. When the wind 
had declared itself vanquished, the sun set to 
work gently to warm the traveller, and he soon 
took off his coat. 

This is the same as saying : " Gentleness is 
worth more than violence," or again : " A kind 
face can accomplish more than any armed man." 



108 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

You must defend yourself, however, be it by 
ordinary or unusual means. To fail to do so 
would be wrong. Not to oppose injustice is to 
encourage and become associated with it. De- 
fending yourself is not only striving for good, 
but serving those against whom you struggle, 
by preventing them from doing evil. 

To let yourself be struck, robbed, insulted, or 
deceived is to fail in your duty toward yourself 
and those who strike, rob, or deceive you. To- 
ward them the law of fraternity consists in say- 
ing, " Halt." 

You must defend others as well as yourself. 
Shall we let a stronger comrade maltreat a weak 
one before our eyes? Shall we keep silence if 
some one be unjustly punished for fear of com- 
promising ourselves? Never! 

Now has no one the right to tell us, " Mind 
your own business " ? Is not this wise and pru- 
dent advice: "Don't bother with that affair; 
let those people attend to it themselves " ? No, 
my children. That advice is wise only in ap- 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 109 

pearance. It is often an evil temptation, a cow- 
ardly suggestion. 

When the lamb is struggling with the wolf, 
no one should be allowed to say, " Leave them 
alone ; let them get out of it as best they can." 
We know too well how this will end, and if we 
cannot succour the lamb, we are worse, we men, 
than the shepherd-dog who runs away and leaves 
his charge to the claws and teeth of the wolf. 

The cause of another is, moreover, in a cer- 
tain measure, ours. An injustice that is com- 
mitted is committed against us. What a man 
does to a fellow-being, however lowly, however 
despised, he does to us. They are dead who no 
longer feel the lash, the burn, the blow. Shame 
upon you, if you can remain untouched, when 
around you the simple are deceived, the absent 
slandered, the orphan defrauded, the rights of 
the weak trampled under foot! If you do not 
feel the blows that strike them, if you are not 
wounded by the fist that slaps justice in the face, 
you are dead to justice. 



110 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 



THE same might be said of national, as 
of personal defence. A people ought 
to be peaceful and kind to their 
neighbours, but can we, nowadays, melt our can- 
non, dismantle our fortresses, or transform our 
swords into ploughshares? That would be fine, 
but very dangerous for our security and liberty. 
If peaceful people were not ready to defend 
themselves vigorously, the earth would soon be- 
long to warlike nations. We are surely not made 
to kill each other on the battle-field, and yet it 
would be even sadder than war to see the whole 
world under the heel of a few through love of 
peace. Right must be strong, if we will not 
have force become right. This ought to encour- 
age every citizen to train himself willingly in 
the calling of arms, when required. 



XIII 



BE HONEST 

HAS man a right to own anything or 
not? This is a problem often un- 
der discussion. We might as well 
dispute over the question whether 
or not we have a right to exist. Property is a 
fact, like life. Man has not produced it. The 
force of things themselves, and the laws that 
govern the world, lead to its attainment. 

The essential property, of which all others are 
only the consequence, is our life and our indi- 
viduality, with their various qualities. The pos- 
session of one's self, seemingly the most elemen- 
tary natural right, has, nevertheless, been slow 
to be recognised. That a human creature may 
belong to himself, dispose of himself freely, and 
not be owned by another creature ; that he may 

be his own property, in short, is a truth that, 
ill 



112 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

even to-day, has only triumphed in part, for 
slavery, real and disguised, always exists. Man 
belongs to himself, then, and as soon as he exer- 
cises his activity or expends his labour, he ac- 
quires rights beyond himself. These rights, 
once existing, he may make use of them for him- 
self or for others, and so each one may say, in a 
greater or less degree, that certain things be- 
long to him. 

The common respect that men have for each 
other's goods is one of the bases of society. It 
is called honesty. 

A thief is one who does not respect the goods 
of others, deems the world an unexplored field, 
where nothing belongs to anybody in particular, 
and helps himself to all he can get. 

Thievery has many forms. The commonest 
is laying hands brutally on the money or goods 
of others, to plunder them. Refined and dis- 
guised varieties of thievery are innumerable, but 
all consist in procuring the goods of others 
by exploiting their confidence, their credulity, 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 113 

their passion, their hunger, their good faith, 
their charity, their religious sentiments, etc. 
The thief is in every business in the world. He 
coins money from anything, and, provided his 
methods succeed, all are equally good. Noth- 
ing is sacred to him. Should he think that he 
can gain more by selling men than coal, rice, or 
tallow, he becomes a slave-dealer. Should there 
be profit in showing himself a good patriot or a 
devotee, he will become patriotic or pious. Let 
there be more to hope for from the contrary, 
you will see him deny his religion, or betray his 
country. 

RESPECT for property does not alone 
consist in taking what is not ours, 
keeping it when one finds it, or bene- 
fiting ourselves by dishonest traffic or dubious 
undertakings. It consists, infinitely more, in re- 
specting our own wealth. Here most men have 
trouble. They believe that honesty means not 
to steal the goods of others, but that with their 



114 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

own personal goods they may do what they 
please. This is a grave error. To be truly hon- 
est, one must respect his own wealth as he would 
that of others, and never use it on his passions, 
his fancies, or his selfishness, but according to 
his reason and his conscience. 

Property is the wealth of which we can dis- 
pose according to our responsibility. A man is 
not permitted to use his money in an evil way, 
any more than he is permitted to make bad use 
of a weapon belonging to him. " It is mine ; I 
can do what I wish with it," is a proposition you 
hear maintained by people who scatter their 
money to the winds, waste their bread, and leave 
their fields and houses in destruction for want of 
care. These people lack the respect every one 
should have for goods confided to his care. 

Economy is the name that is given to the vir- 
tue of using one's wealth judiciously. The 
greater the wealth, the more difficult it is to prac- 
tise it well. Economy is commonly said to be a 
virtue of small people. Absurd reasoning! It 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 115 

is like saying that more vigilance is required to 
guard a small flock than a large one. The more 
we own, the more complicated is the possession, 
and the more our responsibility is taxed. The 
fact of owning something constitutes a social 
function that we must fill, not only in our own, 
but in a general interest, that we may make 
ourselves as useful as possible to humanity. It 
is wrong to let any wealth, whatever, fail of use- 
fulness to somebody. You may possess lit- 
tle or much, but you must not lose or ne- 
glect it. When a man has had a great deal 
of trouble in amassing a little money or prop- 
erty, he cares so much the more for it, and noth- 
ing is more honourable. The economical work- 
man or the farmer, who has at such pains laid 
up a little, respects himself, with his past labours, 
in the wealth he has carefully saved, and he 
does not wish to spend it lightly. Nothing is 
sadder than to see a man dissipate foolishly the 
fruit of painful toil. 

What would you say if you knew two men, one 



116 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

of whom would labour six long days of the week, 
and the other, on Sunday, would take the money 
of the first and go and eat and drink it up? A 
lawful indignation would stir you; you could 
not pity enough the poor slave whose salary 
is destroyed by a vile parasite, and if you were 
able, you would put an end to the shameful 
abuse. Alas, he who labours all day long, and 
he who foolishly spends in an hour, are often 
one and the same man. He has no pity for him- 
self, for the money laboriously acquired; he re- 
spects neither himself nor his work, and becomes 
his own tyrant. This is one of the worst sla- 
veries from which the world suffers. 

AS health creates duties toward the sick, 
intelligence toward the ignorant, 
strength toward the weak, so the 
wealth that we have, whatever it may be, creates 
duties toward those who have none. 

Some men possess amiability, liberality, mag- 
nanimity; others are, on the contrary, in the 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 117 

possession of surliness, egotism, peevishness, or 
ferocity. Like the dog who gnaws his bone, and 
growls and shows his teeth at whoever ap- 
proaches, are some men who keep their wealth 
to themselves with exclusiveness and malevolent 
feelings. They are always afraid that some one 
will take it from them, and this fear makes them 
evil-minded and hard. Never will they give any- 
thing away. They want only to receive. To 
get, is good; to give, evil. He who asks them 
for help is an enemy and an impostor. 

Others possess things stupidly. They hold 
their wealth as a monkey would a missal or a fine 
piece of Gobelin tapestry, knowing neither the 
value nor the use of it, and they employ it sense- 
lessly. 

Let me say here a word about equality of for- 
tune, of which some make a sort of ideal. Equal- 
ity would perhaps be possible, if it consisted 
alone in the exterior resemblance of the goods 
we possessed and in their respective quantity. 
But that is not the point. You would try in 



118 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

vain to make fortunes alike, since men put them 
to such varied uses. Fortune is like a musical 
instrument; knowing how to play it is every- 
thing. Even if everybody had a flute, would all 
play it alike? The same thing in different 
hands changes value entirely. So long as men 
have different natures, so long will their wealth, 
even of different kinds, be unequal. What is 
essential is to hold it in a fraternal spirit. 



XIV 



BEWARE OF THE FIRST STEP 

ONE of the principal precautions to 
take, in leading a just and upright 
life, is to flee, not only from evil, 
but from the paths that may lead 
to it. We are seldom born wicked, or invincibly 
disposed to evil. We become evil by gradations 
that are like halting-places in the apprenticeship 
of sin. Useful observations are here to be made. 
Since we have just spoken of honesty, let us see 
how one becomes a thief. 

It is not always because he has an instinctive 
tendency to put his hands upon the property 
of others, but because he does not watch his own 
desires and weaknesses leading to thievery. 
Some try to maintain that hunger and misery 

lead a man to steal. There are cases, doubtless, 
119 



120 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

where misery so maddens a man that he takes 
what is necessary, which he could not procure by 
ordinary means. But all thieves are not hun- 
gry. If such were the case, there would not be 
so many rich thieves in high places ready to aug- 
ment their wealth by dishonest means. Can we 
forget that there are around us many people who 
are at once miserable and honest? 

One of the commonest reasons for stealing is 
laziness. The lazy are nearly always friends 
of the table and of pleasure. Their aim is a life 
of enjoyment, but they do not want to take any 
trouble to attain it. On this account they have 
recourse to theft in order to procure the means 
of making good cheer. 

Other men are industrious, but they are too 
ambitious. Their gain does not satisfy their de- 
sire to shine. They must have an elegant resi- 
dence, genteel raiment, fine food, and every kind 
of distraction. A time comes when honest gain 
is not enough for so many exigencies. How 
shall they satisfy their luxurious tastes? They 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 121 

then run into debt and never pay, or allow them- 
selves to commit underhand tricks or abuse of 
confidence. How many faithless employees have 
become thieves through ambition! 

Gambling is the road by which many of our 
contemporaries arrive at the most shameful ex- 
pedients. The gambler abandons the regular 
conditions of life to live by chance. He hopes 
to grow rich in a short time by a lucky chance. 
Once let him get a taste of gambling and he 
becomes drunk with it. Working, waiting, get- 
ting his living by modestly fulfilling his duty, 
become intolerable to him. How absurd to spend 
the whole day carpentering or making shoes for 
the sake of earning five or six francs, when, in 
two hours, you may gain at play twenty, thirty, 
or fifty francs, without tiring yourself! Once 
in this gear, a man is lost. If luck is against 
him, the hope of regaining what he has lost be- 
sets him. He returns to the game with borrowed 
money ; meaning to return it, he takes from the 
chest confided to his care enough to play more. 



122 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD . 

Unfortunately, he loses his stakes, and is guilty 
of an abuse of confidence. Now comes prison; 
his career is broken. 

Some men become thieves through an exagger- 
ated love of their wives and their children. Un- 
able to refuse them anything, desiring to make 
their lives pleasant, they go to expenses beyond 
their means, and try in every way to obtain 
money. 

Many children have ended by taking very im- 
portant things after having first laid hands on 
insignificant ones. To-day they take a pen or 
a book, or get into a garden through love of 
forbidden fruit. To-morrow they levy their 
depredations upon the stalls in front of 
shops, and, in the end, they are unable to dis- 
tinguish between their own goods and those of 
others. 

For the most part the thief is not a man apart, 
but one like any other, who has turned to crime 
as wine turns to vinegar. 

A murderer develops, too, by degrees, and not 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 123 

suddenly. Men who are very gentle, without 
any homicidal disposition, find that they have 
committed a murder by having put themselves 
into a position that has led them to it little by 
little. A thief, at night, means merely to loot a 
house ; in the morning he finds that he has killed 
a man. 

Jealousy, anger, or whatever causes a man to 
lose his mastery over himself, easily leads him to 
acts of violence. 

The career of the liar, also, is not run in a 
day. It is reached little by little. Hypocrisy 
is an accomplished art, that is only acquired by 
exercise. 

Bad conduct, intemperance, and impurity are 
learned by degrees, and, after having been the 
exception, end by becoming habits. You begin 
as a novice, but you see, at length, that with 
time you have become a master. 

The great fault lies in not watching the be- 
ginnings. You reassure yourself by such 
phrases as, " Once is not a habit. It is such a 



124 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

small thing. What matters a little irregularity ? 
We shall not go too far. Take our word, we 
shall stop in time." 

Suppose that, giving way to your adventurous 
spirit, you had climbed to the roof by the cat's 
road. There you are, sitting on the eaves, your 
legs over the edge. What would you say if 
I tried to get you to fall half-way and then 
stop ? You would say : " But once in space, 
I cannot stop until I reach the ground." 
You would be right. Beware of the descent 
toward evil. He is mistaken who lets him- 
self glide softly down it, intending to stop in 
time. 

Each of us has seen, on the railroad and the 
street railway, what is called a switch. At such 
a place, the cars need to deviate but an inch 
from their original position to go in another 
direction. At first, you hardly notice the differ- 
ence, but upon it depends all the rest of the 
journeys Remember this, my children, when 
the opportunity of leaving the right way pre- 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 125 

sents itself. Here are the places to watch. See 
to jour thoughts; be careful to avoid the be- 
ginnings of evil. An old proverb says : " It is 
the first step that counts." Do not forget that. 



XV 



BE INDUSTRIOUS 

PEOPLE have very erroneous ideas 
about work. Some regard it as a 
chastisement from God; others sim- 
ply as a necessary evil. These two 
ways of looking at it lead us to represent a 
happy life as one of perpetual ease. To play, 
refresh ourselves, and let the days pass without 
taking any trouble, would be the height of 
felicity. 

For my part, I consider this the dream of a 
sluggard, the ideal of a lazy good-for-nothing. 
We must cure ourselves of it as of a dangerous 
sickness. The idea that work is a punishment 
may have come to men in the face of certain 
horrible, brutish tasks, where the worker is seen 
less than the slave. Alas ! such labour does ex- 
ist. All the efforts of society should try to di- 
126 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 127 

minish or destroy it by organising labour in such 
a way that no one should be reduced to the state 
of a brute, and that human dignity should be 
possible to every one. 

That labour itself, in general, should be a 
punishment, an evil, or a shameful bondage is a 
nameless delusion. 

Those who refer to the Bible as teaching 
such a doctrine forget that even before the fall 
of Adam, it is said that God placed him in the 
Garden of Eden to cultivate it. Now, nobody 
has ever taken the cultivation of the soil for a 
sinecure. 

Let us leave tradition and consider the 
structure of the human body, and even that of 
the hand alone. The whole world presents no 
tool comparable to the human hand. All the 
marvels of mechanics are children's toys beside 
it. If you believe that the hammer is made to 
strike, the pincers to seize, the gimlet to pierce 
holes, why do you think that the hand was made 
to do nothing? Nonsense! 



128 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

The hand is so made for work that at the very 
outset of life man begins to exercise and make 
use of it, just as he does all his other mem- 
bers. Prevent a child from trying his strength, 
from moving or from handling objects, and you 
make him most miserable. The worst misfor- 
tune is that of the prisoner reduced to inaction 
and immobility. To act is to live. Work is a 
law of life. The more perfect the life, the more 
active it is. Look at nature : the lower creatures 
are endowed with a rudimentary activity ; oysters 
stuck to a rock need make no effort for nourish- 
ment; they are satisfied to seize it as it passes 
within their reach. But in more complex ani- 
mals activity manifests itself. The bird builds 
her nest, feeds her little ones, hunts, fishes, and 
searches in all sorts of ingenious ways for sub- 
sistence. Bees are wonderful architects. The 
ant pierces galleries in the earth, and stores up 
provisions; her proverbial activity made Solo- 
mon say: " Go to the ant, thou sluggard." 

What a great amount of labour fills all crea- 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 129 

tion ! The universe is perpetually at work. 
Everything is moving, fermenting, pressing on- 
ward, transforming. Christ said, " My Father 
always works." What a lesson for the lazy, the 
enemies of work, who despise action ! They may 
seek in this vast world for a place where exists 
the inertia in which they delight. Even while 
you sleep, lazy ones, the earth turns and your 
heart beats ; the mighty progress of things con- 
tinues. Immobility is death. 

We owe our life to work. To be fed, clothed, 
lodged, cared for in illness, even to be instructed, 
to learn morality, to enlighten one's soul and 
procure higher consolation, humanity needs to 
work. Labour is the price of each one of our 
conquests and benefits. Such a word of life and 
truth has cost as much trouble to find as a new 
continent. 

Now suppose a man has all he needs, that he 
is not only rich but wise and morally cultivated : 
even so, work would be a necessity for him. 
People often say : " He is rich ; he does not 



130 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

have to work for a living." This is a gross 
error. I am not going to speak here of every 
one's duty to make himself useful, but of his 
need to exercise his activity. Every being who 
is making no effort is degrading himself, grow- 
ing corrupt and rotten. Should the most culti- 
vated mind cease from acting, searching, or 
thinking, it would soon become crusted over. 
The purest and most upright character that 
should, for a time, entirely neglect itself, would 
slowly descend to apathy or immorality. 

It has been said that man should earn his 
bread by the sweat of his brow. That is entirely 
true of everybody. It means that you should 
live by your own efforts, and you can just as 
readily state the opposite and yet speak the 
truth : " You will die of your own inertia." 
The sword rusts in the scabbard; furniture un- 
cared for becomes covered with dust; poorly 
attended gardens are invaded by weeds; un- 
brushed furs are eaten by moths, and the man 
who does not work becomes the prey of moral 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 131 

vermin. Vices feed on him as worms do on a 
corpse. 

Living without working is not alone a vain 
undertaking, but an injustice and a crime. Hu- 
manity owes its life and its progress to its chil- 
dren's work. He who does nothing profits by 
the work of others, offering nothing in ex- 
change. He is a parasite upon the body social, 
not a man. " He who does not work shall not 
eat," says the Scripture. Nothing is more just. 
And who does not understand that this is the 
condemnation of the sluggard to death? 

We have, then, all of us, the best reasons for 
devoting ourselves to useful, profitable labour. 
Nature sets the example; our noblest instincts 
bind us strongly to it. Our debt to humanity, 
our need of keeping ourselves strong, and in 
moral and physical health, all counsel activity, 
so that there may be bread to eat. To earn our 
bread by our own labour is the most honourable 
thing in the world. Most men work to earn 
their bread. But do not forget that earning our 



132 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

bread is not the only reason for working. If it 
were we should, some day, come to this foolish 
conclusion : " I have my bread now, so I do not 
need to work any more." 

THE need of work being once estab- 
lished, you may ask in what manner 
we should employ our activity, and 
if certain occupations do not lend a dignity to 
those who pursue them. 

Faculties are infinitely varied, because needs 
are numerous and aptitudes are different. The 
choice of work for a career depends upon our 
capacity, and also upon the circumstances and 
means at our disposal. All have not artistic ca- 
pacity, manual skill, or the vigour of mind and 
body necessary for every calling. One is more 
apt at thinking than at wielding the hammer; 
another has a tendency toward painting that 
would give him a fair reputation. Each one 
should examine himself and choose agreeable 
work within his reach and conformable to his 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 133 

aptitudes. He is a miserable slave who drags 
his duty as he would a ball, and dislikes or hates 
his calling. 

So much said, however, it is unjust and pue- 
rile to ordain differences in dignity between the 
different occupations of men. There are differ- 
ences of form. Some occupations are cleaner, 
more aesthetic, or more glorified. Some duties 
seem inferior; others, superior. You hear of a 
high functionary and a subaltern. Such a dis- 
tinction has its reason for being, which, however, 
does not go to the bottom of things. The equal 
dignity of all truly useful work, and of all 
necessary duties, manual or intellectual, distin- 
guished or humble, should be established as an 
absolute principle. Society cannot do without 
good carpenters any more than without good 
architects, without good labourers than good 
physicians and professors. There is a special 
dignity and a singular nobility for all those 
who put their hands to work that helps to sus- 
tain humanity. From youth, you should accus- 



134 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

torn yourself to the nobility of the worker, and 
learn to do him honour wherever you meet him. 
Should you salute a workman with profound 
emotion and lively gratitude, I ask you to save 
gratitude and emotion for the humblest and the 
most difficult work. Those who work in visible 
places are honoured; they have their reward. 
Let us find those who are forgotten, and let our 
tribute of affection sustain them in their often 
hard and ignored task. Idleness, alone, is des- 
picable, the hand that refuses to touch useful 
labour is alone unworthy of being touched, for it 
has itself cut the bond of fraternal solidarity 
that binds each of us to humanity. 

In some places, peopled with do-nothings, 
they say of a man or a woman that he or she has 
to work for a living, and is less esteemed for it. 
To have to work is the sign of belonging to an 
inferior class. Here is my opinion on that sub- 
ject: I honour work so much that I admire it, 
even among the brute creation, and I cannot 
endure idleness in my fellow-beings or in myself. 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 135 

When it is time for me to rest, — a very impor- 
tant and legitimate thing, — and I go by a 
donkey drawing his cart, I find him much more 
interesting than I am, and I say to myself : " In- 
dustrious little donkey, I ought to take off my 
hat to you, for you are working and I am pre- 
tending to be dignified." My children, you may 
believe me that this saying is true, and should 
be inscribed in your memories : "A donkey 
that works is a king compared to a man who does 
nothing." 

You appreciate better what you learn by 
yourselves. To teach yourselves not to despise 
any work, it is good to have seen and done 
other things than those of your own profession 
or trade. I find manual labourers, exposed to 
bad weather and to the heat of the sun, quite 
inclined to despise the brain-worker seated un- 
der shelter, while the latter is often tempted to 
take the former for machines. It is well for 
the thinker to work at times with his hands. His 
health and his relations with his fellow-men profit 



136 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

by it. Nor is it bad for a philosopher or a 
scholar to find himself grappling with a shovel, 
saw, or hammer. As he tries to make a table 
alone, he finds out that the joiner knows many 
things of which he is ignorant, and that the 
former, too, works with his head. The opposite 
is also true. It is enough for those tempted to 
take mental labour as a sort of disguised idle- 
ness, to try it, in order to undeceive themselves. 
Thought is such a great effort, that some people 
prefer to saw a cord of wood rather than write 
a letter. Old folks sometimes think that chil- 
dren, who are studying and preparing them- 
selves for ruling or intellectual careers, had bet- 
ter learn a trade as well. Nothing is wiser. A 
man initiated into manual labour is not only 
more skilful than another; he has also more 
judgment. 

Let us guard against the superficial opinion 
that work is only a commodity. From one point 
of view, doubtless, this is so, but it is something 
else as well. A tree, a fruit, an animal, a pic- 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 137 

ture, may also be regarded as commodities, 
though they are also something else. So it is 
with work. Is an apple a projectile because it 
sometimes serves as such, when everybody knows 
what it is to eat apple-sauce? Is a dictionary a 
cushion because it can, in a pinch, make a chair 
at the table for the little brother? No. Well, 
then, work is sometimes a commodity, but it is, 
indeed, something else as well. When a man 
gives himself truly to his work, he puts into it 
his will, his strength, his health, his love, and 
his soul. A man may put into a day's work, 
for which he receives three francs, so much of 
the qualities of devotion, intelligence, and good- 
ness, that nobody can pay him. You pay for 
the visits of your doctor, but you can never re- 
pay his risk of taking the disease while he is car- 
ing for you. Nothing is more just than that 
work should be paid for, but you should never 
say to a man : " You are paid for that," since 
that is an insult strictly merited only by the 
do-nothing who would accept his salary without 



138 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

troubling to earn it. Do not say to those who 
have served you : " I have paid you ; we are 
quits." Such speeches are all marks of bad re- 
lations between people. Just as a polite man 
says " thank you," even when he receives a 
doubly merited salary, a sensible, just man 
thanks the labourer, and is grateful to him as 
he pays him. 

Work is both a commodity and a sacred 
thing. It assures a man not his bread alone, 
but his place in the sunshine of human dignity, 
and constitutes a bond of mutual gratitude 
among all associated workmen. Each one of us, 
at his post, fills the place of others. We are 
there for our own profit and that of all. 
To understand this point more completely, 
listen : 

" That little chimney-sweep is very ugly, 
papa. I do not like to look at such black faces ; 
he might be a negro or the devil. He must be 
wicked, don't you think so, papa ? " 

" You should not talk so, my child. Without 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 139 

knowing it, you are being ungrateful, for if the 
little chimney-sweep is black, it is for you." 

" For me ! What do you mean, papa ? I do 
not understand." 

" I shall explain. In cold weather, there are 
fires in all the houses. Thousands of hearths 
are burning to warm us and to cook our food. 
The chimneys fill with soot and get very dirty. 
Soon chimney-sweeping becomes indispensable. 
If there were no chimney-sweeps, who would do 
the sweeping? Papa, mamma, or you, perhaps. 
Now any of us would infallibly get blackened 
at that work. You see here - how we should 
look. I do not think that you would have much 
taste for it. Then be thankful that the little 
chimney-sweep does it, for, I repeat, it is for 
you that he is black." 

" I had never thought of that, father dear." 

" You will think of it in the future, my child. 
And, since we are on the subject, listen further. 
It is for you that the miller is white, the butch- 
er red; for you the labourer is burned by the 



140 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

sun and tanned by the wind and rain; for you 
that the shoemaker has a round spine, the ma- 
son hardened hands, that the doctor exposes 
himself to contagion, that the mechanic stands 
at his engine, and that the soldier fights on the 
frontier ; when these men die at their posts, it is 
for you. Every man who fulfils a useful func- 
tion does it for others. Each one is, in his work, 
the servant and representative of his fellows. 
And the more difficult, the humbler, the more 
poorly paid the work, the more the workman 
should be honoured." 

" I promise you, father, that I shall never 
again say that the chimney-sweep is ugly, or the 
masons, or the cabmen." 

" That is not enough, dear child. The older 
you grow the more you will perceive how men 
and women work for you with their hands and 
with their thoughts. Work is the life of the 
world. When you understand that, you will be 
content, no longer, with respecting the work- 
man; you will want to imitate him. In your 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 141 

turn, you will make yourself useful. You will 
have loads to bear and efforts to make for oth- 
ers. And when you are tired or worn out with 
the honest labour that is the duty of each of us, 
you will think often of the little chimney-sweep. 
Each human toil leaves traces on hands, face, 
forehead, and heart. When one has done his 
duty well, he is generally covered with wrinkles, 
scars, dust, and sometimes with blood. These 
are not usually pretty to look at, my child, but 
nothing in the world is more to be venerated. I 
wish but one thing for you. As you have just 
said, in your childish ignorance, 4 Oh, how ugly 
that chimney-sweep is ! ' you may, some day, en- 
lightened by life, cry out to all the labourers 
whose work has marked, twisted, or scarred them : 
4 Ah, how beautiful you are ! ' 99 

None are ugly but the wicked and the useless. 
The more they shine or array themselves, the 
more repugnant are they. 



XVI 



REST 

REST, like work, is a law no one may 
escape. Nature has her periods of 
activity and of repose. Trees rest 
from bearing fruit, fields from 
yielding harvests. Machines, too, have need of 
rest, or they will too quickly wear out. Every- 
where we notice the alternation of activity and 
repose. Existence is a succession of efforts and 
stops. You know that we need frequently to 
renew our powers by sleep. A being who would 
violate the law of rest and who, though he did 
no work, would stay awake all the time, would 
infallibly destroy himself. Our organism is so 
constructed that at a given moment it succumbs 
to sleep. Worn out with play, the child sleeps 

where he lies; tired of listening, auditors sleep 
142 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 143 



in meetings ; the weary miller sleeps in the noise 
of the mill, the overwrought engineer sleeps on 
his engine. 

It is noticeable that the more complicated and 
perfect is a nature, the more complete rest does 
it need. 

Such rest is found not alone in sleep, but in 
distraction, change of occupation, and in all 
that has been well named recreation. Those an- 
imals that have a certain degree of intelligence, 
such as dogs, cats, etc., indulge in frolics and 
gambols. More than they, by reason of his ab- 
sorbing and often painful life, has man need of 
diversion. Intervals and pauses should be given 
him to get possession of himself. 

Students sleep all night, and it is at your age 
that one sleeps best. Why do you have vaca- 
tions ? It is understood that we must stop learn- 
ing sometimes in order to classify and clarify 
what we have learned. It is well known, too, 
that children set to work again with more ardour 
when they have enjoyed a short respite. Do you 



144 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

not think that all those who work and endure 
on the earth are like you? The days become 
monotonous because they are all alike. It is im- 
possible always to perform the same duties with 
the same enthusiasm. 

The most agreeable things, too often repeat- 
ed, become fatiguing. A song that pleases once 
or twice tires, enervates, and finally exasperates 
if we must hear it twenty times. Should not 
hard work, with greater reason, awaken discour- 
agement and depression? Fatigue keeps its eye 
on the labourer, and if he pretends to despise it, 
he is the sooner obliged to acknowledge that he 
has miscalculated. Muscular powers have their 
limit, intellectual force has its end; our hearts 
have but a certain capacity for experiencing emo- 
tions. The moment comes when we are in need 
of oil like the waning lamp. Let it continue to 
burn without oil, and the light grows lower and 
lower, and finally smokes. It is the same with 
man. He risks doing bad work, who works when 
he is worn out. Then let the labourer rest. If 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 145 

he is his own master, it is his duty to call a halt. 
If he serves others, let his master or mistress take 
measures to procure for him now and then the 
indispensable leisure. The labourer must not 
descend to the ranks of the galley-slave ; the 
right of rest is one of the sacred rights of every 
living creature. 

For this reason, from the farthest antiquity, 
and among the most diverse peoples, a periodic 
rest has been raised to the height of a social 
and religious institution. The Day of Rest, be 
it Jewish Sabbath, Moslem Friday, or Christian 
Sunday, is a monument of humanity, wisdom, 
and pity. To value lightly the day of rest is to 
manifest very short sight and profound igno- 
rance of the needs of mankind. 

This is not a lost day. On the contrary, it is 
made to render us capable of better profiting by 
the others. Every one should have the liberty 
of using his rest agreeably to himself, if he uses 
it well. He who spends his day of rest in dissi- 
pation, not only does not rest or prepare him- 



146 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

self for future labour, but returns to his work 
more fatigued than when he left it. The use of 
our leisure is one of the great questions of life. 
Because they do not amuse themselves in a wise 
and reasonable manner, many men destroy, dur- 
ing their leisure hours, all the fruits of their 
hours of work. A multitude of good workers 
lose their effort because they do not know how 
to use their free time. After the art of work- 
ing, the most important is that of relaxing. 

It is no less true, however, that each one ought 
to be able to choose his recreations. A forced 
diversion is no longer a diversion. On the kind 
of work necessarily depends the kind of recrea- 
tion. For a rural postman, for example, the 
ideal rest is to stay at home, seated in an arm- 
chair or lying in the shade. The tailor and the 
dressmaker, always seated, dream of leaving 
their homes and taking a walk. Thinkers rest 
by gardening, labouring, going to the moun- 
tains or the sea-shore. Manual labourers prefer 
to rest by reading a book. The principal dis- 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 147 

traction of the countryman is to go to the city. 
The city man, on the contrary, takes willing, as 
they say, the key to the fields. Let us not leg- 
islate about the manner of resting. 

NOW here is a new motive for taking 
some spare time once in a while. In 
the midst of the ordinary preoccupa- 
tions of existence, and in the fever of action, we 
lose the habit of entering into ourselves and of 
reflecting on our actions. The torrent carries 
us away. We work and go about without know- 
ing well what we are doing or where we are go- 
ing. There is a danger here. If you do not 
want to lose your way, it is well to stop at times, 
look back whence you came, and forward whither 
you are going. To live well, a man must some- 
times collect his thoughts, devote an hour to med- 
itating on his conduct, screening himself from 
passions and temptations, listening to the voice 
of his conscience, and lifting his thought to less 
troubled regions. It is very useful as well to 



148 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

leave your work sometimes, that you may learn 
from watching the work of others. You do 
wrong in becoming so absorbed in your task 
that you no longer see what is going on around 
you. 

All these reasons make rest a sacred thing, 
and because it is so sacred, each of us ought to 
hold to it for himself and others. It is impious 
not to look out for others who labour; to give 
them no truce; to trouble them without good 
cause. And here it is necessary to have children 
consider their parents. We are accustomed to 
think of them as our Providence, and to rely 
upon them for everything. We may do this 
while we are infants. The nursing child cries 
for his food at night, careless whether or not 
his mother is fatigued. We should pardon him, 
for he is ignorant. But it is unpardonable for 
big boys and girls to be waited on by their pa- 
rents, and to forget that parents' strength has 
a limit. Think often of the cares and toils of 
your parents. Help them as much as you can, 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 149 

and if, by putting yourself out a little, you may 
give them a chance to rest, a good sleep, or a 
little leisure, do not fail to do so. 

Lessen your demands, always and everywhere, 
if you can, and so lighten the load of those who 
are especially burdened. Do not add to the 
burdens of servants or public officers ; do not call 
up doctors and druggists unnecessarily in the 
middle of the night; do not do on Sunday work 
that may be put off to other days. The labourer 
is worthy of his rest. It is always a good deed 
to help him get it. 



XVII 



THE SUPREME LAW 

WE have applied ourselves so far 
to discovering and formulating 
certain laws of life. We have 
drawn their consequences under 
the form of precepts and practical rules. But, 
however wise and equitable may be these direc- 
tions, they are powerless, in themselves, to make 
us just and humane. To know them is not 
enough; we must have the strength to perform 
them, which is found in a powerful and pro- 
found sentiment called love or charity. Love of 
one's neighbour is the hidden spring of all life 
that is good. From this we draw our inspira- 
tion for good, and the power to realise it. 

All of a man's actions are prepared in his 
150 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 151 

heart, so if the heart is evil, full of hatred or 
ill-will, we may in vain know what is good, for 
we shall not do it, nor have a desire to do it. 

The violations, of which men are guilty, of 
the laws of truth, honesty, temperance, life, and 
the welfare of their fellows, are all explained by 
a lack of kindness. They agree with the facts 
that our hearts are not inclined to goodwill 
toward others. We are either badly disposed 
toward them, or their lot does not interest us 
enough; they are indifferent or distasteful to us. 

The thief lacks kindness more than honesty. 

The liar lacks kindness more than frankness. 

The drunkard lacks kindness more than so- 
briety. If he thought of his wife and his chil- 
dren, could he so degrade himself? 

The do-nothing lacks kindness more than 
energy. 

Even the faults that we seem to commit 
through absence of character, or through weak- 
ness of will, come especially from lack of kind- 
ness. If we possessed kindness, it would make 



152 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

us strong. Nothing is difficult to true love. 
Through its enthusiasm, it submits itself to the 
hardest labours, and exposes itself to dangers and 
sufferings. 

You have all seen sail-boats on sea or river 
momentarily stopped for want of wind. Sails 
hang limp and the boat does not stir. This is 
called " lying to." But let the wind rise and 
fill the sails, and immediately the boat starts; it 
has life and motion. We may be compared to 
boats. When the quickening breath of love fails 
us, nothing goes, for the essential thing is 
lacking. 

We must force ourselves to acquire and cul- 
tivate the essential. We must desire it ardently, 
and ask it from God as the treasure of treasures. 
Without it, all our qualities and all our gifts are 
fruitless or turn to evil. Let a man have health, 
intelligence, talent, fortune, or strength of will ; 
if he be not kind, to what purpose has he all 
the rest? I admit that he may have even relig- 
ion, virtue, and a seriously correct conduct; if 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 153 

he be not kind, what is his religion worth, and 
to whom is his virtue useful? 

Is it possible to love God truly without car- 
ing for men, our fellow-beings, of whom God 
is the Father? 

The supreme law, containing all the others 
and making us truly men, is the law of Love. 
" Love one another." In these words is the 
world's power and salvation. Evil comes from 
not loving one another enough. Without love, 
men hate, deceive, corrupt, persecute, dispute, 
and destroy each other. To obey his parents, 
a child must love them; to raise and care for 
his children, a parent must love them. Love is 
needed to teach pupils to pardon and amend 
faults. To nurse the sick, as much pardon as 
science is required. Without love and kindness, 
life is cold, selfish, and uninteresting, and finally 
leads to a distaste for everything. With kind- 
ness, the difficult becomes easy; the obscure 
clear; life assumes a charm, and its miseries are 
softened. If we knew the power of kindness, 



154 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

we should transform into a paradise this world 
that without it is a hell. 

To love makes one happy; to hate, unhappy. 
A man's worst enemy is his selfishness. It nar- 
rows and poisons his existence, and trans- 
forms him into a slave of himself. Hateful sel- 
fishness is like a narrow unhealthy cage where 
all our being languishes. Love is the free vast 
horizon where the soul can spread its wings. Let 
us then learn early to be interested in something 
besides ourselves. 



XVIII 



REPARATION OF EVIL 

IN spite of our efforts to live well, we realise 
that we have committed more or less seri- 
ous faults, and experience soon teaches us 
that in the world there exists a great 
amount of iniquity, injustice, and vice, the sad 
consequences of which we meet at every step. 
We should ask ourselves, then, what ought to 
be done by the man who has committed evil, 
and what would be his bearing toward that not 
committed by himself. Let us take the latter 
question first. In the presence of evil committed 
by others, what shall we do? 

FIRST, let us not rejoice over it. Joy 
derived from the suffering of others is 
criminal. Few men ought to be so bad 
as to feel it, but, alas ! this inhuman feeling 

155 



156 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 



is widespread. Every day we see children and 
even older persons taking an evil pleasure in the 
faults of others. It would seem that the mis- 
deeds of our comrades or our brothers and sis- 
ters would whiten or excuse ours. Let us strive 
against this low tendency. To every well- 
directed heart, evil, whatever it may be, and no 
matter who is guilty of it, causes grief; he re- 
grets and deplores it. May we stop here? 

Most men have made a rule, by which they 
bind themselves to repair only the evil of which 
they are the authors. They consider themselves 
responsible for the results of this evil, and 
obliged to remedy them as far as possible. This 
seems logical enough in the main. To repair 
the harm one himself has caused is right ; every- 
body should approve of that. But it is mag- 
nifying our duty to enjoin ourselves to repair 
that caused by others. No one can approve 
such a demand. Yet we deceive ourselves in 
reasoning thus. Let us take an example. A 
house is on fire. Who should fight the fire and 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 157 

put it out if possible? After the foregoing rea- 
soning, it should be the one who lighted it. 
But where is he? Shall we hunt him up before 
going to the rescue? Perhaps it was a heedless 
smoker, who is now far away and ignorant of 
the result of his imprudence. Perhaps it was a 
criminal, who has fled, happy to see the column 
of smoke rising behind him. He, surely, will 
not come back to put out the fire. Run quickly 
to the rescue. Let the flames get once under 
way, and it will be time to busy yourself about 
responsibility. When it is a matter of a fire, 
it seems very simple. Why not apply the same 
rule to all the evil that comes to our notice? 

Here is another deplorable habit. When we 
have given counsels and warnings that result in 
serious accidents to those who have disdained 
them, our first, and often our last remark is, 
" I told you so." Many are satisfied with that, 
and believe they have done their duty in warn- 
ing others of danger. They have not been 
heeded ; what they foresaw has happened ; they 



158 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

pay no further attention to the matter. I do 
not think that this way of acting is intelligent 
or worthy of a man. Our duty is to contribute 
to the reparation of evil, even if our fellows 
draw it upon themselves by scorning our advice. 
You warn a child not to go near the water; he 
disobeys, approaches it, and falls in. Would 
you be pitying him if you left him there, and 
cried, " I told you so 99 ? That would be in- 
human. 

We shall then follow other methods. Every 
circumstance will lead us to think that duty is 
doing what is necessary to atone for the evil we 
may witness. Where may we go without seeing 
it? Those who make havoc are not usually in 
a hurry to repair it. Liars spread their lies 
and calumnies, but it would be as hard to dis- 
cover who the guilty ones are as to invite them 
to contradict themselves or to relieve their vic- 
tims of the tortures they have obliged them 
to undergo. 

Thieves take the property of others, but if 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 159 

you had to wait until they brought it back, you 
would wait a long time, and so, everywhere, 
patience would be lost in counting on criminals 
to heal the wounds they have made and repair 
the damages they have caused. If good men 
did not set to work to re-establish order where 
others have sown disorder and ruin, evil would 
grow in peace, and it could not be successfully 
resisted. Let us set to work energetically. As 
the life-saver hastens to the succour of a life in 
danger, let us begin to repair an evil as soon 
as we have seen it. Let us not first try to 
reproach those who have committed it. First 
intervene, comfort, cure; then, if there is an 
opportunity, place responsibility, and make re- 
monstrances. 

If the wrong has been done directly against 
us, if it is in the form of a loss sustained, of 
harm inflicted on our person, the work of rep- 
aration is complicated. We are irritated and 
wounded, and while our irritation, like our suf- 
fering, is legitimate, it must not become obsti- 



160 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

nate. Should we perceive the beginning of 
regret in the offender, let us encourage it by 
great leniency. Let us be capable of forgiving 
and forgetting. To forget a kindness is im- 
pious. To forget an injury is the mark of a 
generous soul. Yet it is not to others alone, but 
to ourselves, also, that we render a service in 
consenting to pardon a wrong. He who keeps 
a lively memory of every offence is like a per- 
fect accountant who enters everything on his 
books. There are, at length, so many offences 
and wicked deeds to put down, that they cum- 
ber his memory, and the presence of so many 
ugly things darken and taint his mind. He 
succumbs to the evil impressions. You have 
heard of men condemned to be walled up alive. 
Picture the frightful anguish of being enclosed 
in a niche in a thick wall and seeing the plaster 
slowly rise that is finally to close in upon you. 
He who tries to remember every offence against 
himself is condemning himself to be walled up 
alive. He is heaping up around him the wrongs 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 161 

of others, and he will soon be buried underneath 
the mass. 

IF conscience tells us to repair evil that 
others have done, it naturally imposes 
upon us much more the reparation of 
that which emanates from ourselves. To hide 
it, to leave to time and circumstance the care of 
atoning for it, would be a greater fault than 
the first. 

Alas, man is quick to do evil, slow to make 
amends ! He thinks it is false self-love to recog- 
nise the wrong that he has done, to ask pardon, or 
to take back frankly the wounding words he may 
have said. The evil that he does not mend is 
like a wound that is neither cleaned nor dressed. 
It festers and finally compromises the general 
health. To acknowledge your faults coura- 
geously and simply is as great a thing as to do 
the most brilliant act. 

Let us note in passing an error into which 
it would be dangerous to fall. Certain tender 



162 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

consciences are so impressed with a fault that 
they are inconsolable about it. Repentance 
takes such hold of them that they believe them- 
selves forever lost and dishonoured. You should 
never give up to despair. To regret a wrong 
is good; to stop to think of it too long, and 
to plunge into remorse, is to lose the power of 
reparation. 

A man who has sinned may be compared to 
one who has fallen down. He does not stay on 
the ground looking at his bruises and groaning 
over his pain. He makes an effort to get up 
or he is lost. 

It is surely a terrible thing to say that some 
faults are irreparable, that lost time never re- 
turns, that what is past is past, and that we 
shall never have another opportunity of effac- 
ing the stain that distresses us. But is it right 
to lose to-day and to-morrow by looking back- 
ward, because we have lost yesterday? Cer- 
tainly not. Repentance like this would be 
fruitless and corrupting. Let it become, on the 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 163 

contrary, an active force in our lives ; let us re- 
member our sins only to avoid them in the fu- 
ture and to recollect good incessantly. Let us 
leave to God who forgives, the past that tor- 
ments us, and let us get all the profit possible 
from the present moment, so that it may not 
fall fruitless into the gulf of the past. Those 
men who have done the most good, wiped away 
the most tears, healed the most wounds, righted 
the most wrongs and injustices, are inspired by 
an active repentance, with a lively feeling of 
past sins pardoned and transformed into an 
unwearied source of good. 



WHERE ARE WE GOING? 



XIX 



DEATH AND ETERNAL LIFE 

SOME people think it is better never to 
speak of death, or even consider it. I 
know that they have tried to hide it 
from their children, carefully avoiding 
any encounter that might reveal it to them. 
This is one of those desperate feats that serve 
only to make more formidable what we are 
obliged to look sometime in the face. 

Death comes without any care on our part. 
Its manifestations are part of the daily spec- 
tacle of nature and of human society. We need 
not look at a corpse or a coffin to see it, for to 
note only a fly or a bird falling lifeless is to 
have our attention directed to that mysterious 
Something called death. 

Of course we should not spend our whole life 
watching for its end. That would be the worst 
167 



168 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

way to prepare for it. The school-boy who 
spends his school hours thinking of recess is a 
poor labourer, as well as the workman occupied 
all day long in counting the minutes that sepa- 
rate him from the evening. Like them, he loses 
his time who spends it in fruitless contemplation 
of death. We are here to live. It would be 
especially unhealthy for the mind of youth to 
be invaded by mournful preoccupations and to 
have its soul dulled by a constant representation 
of the last hour. Youth ought to be the time 
of joy, of free gaiety, and of long hopes. 

It is not a bad idea to become familiar with 
the fact that we shall not stay forever on the 
earth, and I do not think it necessary to wait 
for old age to remember death. Since every one 
knows that old age is an exception, it is well to 
consider it while we are young. 

He who thinks at times that his days are 
numbered is disposed to utilise them better. 
The words of Jesus come to him : " Work while 
it is yet day, for the night cometh when no 



WHERE ARE WE GOING? 169 

man can work." The thought of death makes 
him a better man. He watches more scrupu- 
lously his conduct toward those who live near 
him, thinking that perhaps he will not always 
have them. How many faults would be avoided, 
how many sharp regrets spared us, if we would 
consider sometimes that a word or an act may 
irreparably wound our loved ones, and that 
death may separate us before we may have had 
time to console them. 

In order to avoid becoming puffed up on fine 
days, and discouraged by the miseries of life, 
is it not well to say ourselves that all this will 
end? When the way is painful and the burden 
overwhelming, to dream of rest is a comfort. 
For humanity that is struggling, enduring, and 
suffering, this is a comfortable saying: " There 
remaineth still a rest for the people of God." 

Nothing will sooner lower our pride and 
confound our vanity than the thought of the 
instability of beauty, strength, power, and 
fortune. 



170 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

To think sometimes of our end exercises us 
in living well, and teaches us to hold ourselves 
ready for it as becomes men. 

Death comes, it is true, nearly always as a 
surprise. It arrives when one is thinking least 
of it, and rarely presents itself in the expected 
form. It is, therefore, so much the more neces- 
sary to be ready to receive it. 

Now, what should we think about death? We 
should not forget, first of all, that much of its 
bitterness is due to man himself. We bring it 
upon ourselves before our time by all sorts of 
vices and errors; we augment its horrors by 
crime, we trouble its peace by hatred. Cleared 
of what we add to it, as it is included in God's 
Plan and Will, death loses much of its terror. 
It is impossible for the world to be at once tran- 
sitory and changing, and imperishable. Who 
of us could bear to live forever under the same 
conditions? When we are young, it is easy to 
maintain that we should never tire of being 
here. So we are disposed in the morning, ready 



WHERE ARE WE GOING? 171 

for all enterprises, full of all curiosity. But 
evening comes and sleep lays hold of us. We 
ask only one thing — to close our eyes; to sleep. 
Do you know what would happen if some one 
were spared by death and kept here forever? 
He who was the most eager for life would ask 
mercy at the end of a few centuries, and would 
say to God : " Let thy servant depart in peace." 

Let us accustom ourselves in early life to the 
idea that we must go away, and let us play our 
part bravely, without having our good nature 
spoiled or our enthusiasm for work diminished. 
Then, if the moment comes to stop, it does not 
prove that what we have done in this world is 
in vain, not that we should lightly value these 
days that will end. What we have begun here 
will have its successor and its to-morrow. If a 
man resigns himself to death, he is not permitted 
to resign himself to nothingness. Death is a 
stage of progress, it is not the end. God's Will 
for us is infinite. Nothing that comes from 
God can vanish into nothingness. 



172 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

Man is greater than death, since he can enter 
into it freely and give his transitory life for 
what is worth more than mortality. He who 
dies for justice, truth, or the salvation of 
others, is more living than the selfish man saved 
by his cowardice, and having for his only pre- 
occupation the fear of death. 

Each act of courage is a demonstration of 
the superiority of the human soul over exterior 
obstacles. The greatest is dying for duty. 
Such a death is a triumph over death. It is a 
manifestation of the higher life that is hidden 
and being worked out under our ephemeral ex- 
istences. And that sublime manifestation of the 
superiority of man over death has not alone 
been given by strong heroes of past ages, who 
were sustained by great purposes. It has been 
furnished often by children of our age. Nothing 
is nobler than a child who has accustomed him- 
self not to tremble before the horrors of death. 

Let us say this to ourselves, my children : " In 
the face of death, be a man." Do not honour it 



WHERE ARE WE GOING? 173 

so much as to fear it. The kingdom, the power, 
and the glory forever, belong not to it, but to 
Him who wishes you to be a man even in death. 

To make of death a sombre monarch before 
whom the human race bows in passive acquies- 
cence, is contrary to reality and to man's dignity. 
The man in danger of annihilation is he who 
is given up to his animal instincts, and who does 
not know what immortality lies hidden under the 
fibre of this frail life that is torn to pieces by 
death. He becomes, in his blind terror, the prey 
of death, as the mouse is of the cat. His life 
is given him only as a respite more or less brief, 
and the perpetual menace hung over his head 
prevents his enjoyment of it. But the true life 
consists of delivering ourselves entirely from the 
slavery of fear. " Be a man " does not neces- 
sarily mean " know how to live " ; it means also 
" know how to die." And to know how to die 
means not alone accepting resignedly what you 
cannot avoid. It means as well to be strong in 
hope ; to wrap yourself in it as the dying soldier 



174 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 

wraps himself in the flag. Give yourselves up, 
not to annihilation, but to God. He under- 
stands, as you do not, the dark passage, which 
is light for Him. Be confident to the end; 
through the shadows, take the Father's Hand. 

THE great bitterness of death has al- 
ways been the realisation of the sins 
with which the conscience is laden. 
You cannot die in peace when remorse gnaws at 
your heart. Let this be a warning to hold us 
back from evil temptations. Let us remember 
that we must render an account. 

The Master of life and death, however, is not 
an inexorable judge who lays upon our frail 
shoulders burdens of responsibility too heavy 
for fallible creatures. No one has a right to 
terrorise us in His Name. Make way for Christ 
and His Merciful Face! He has told us that 
before the Supreme Judge, Only, Just, and In- 
corruptible, a sincere regret will take the place 
of justice. He has done our poor unequalled 



WHERE ARE WE GOING? 175 

humanity the service of lightening the shadows 
of the tomb. To him who trembles at the judg- 
ment, but weeps over his past and condemns him- 
self, He says, " Thy sins be forgiven thee." To 
him who is troubled by the approach of the twi- 
light where our steps falter, and our eyes grow 
dim, He says, " Fear not, only believe." 

Then when we are thinking of our own death 
or that of our loved ones, particularly if that 
death seems premature, incomprehensible, or vio- 
lent, and in circumstances where our doctrines 
and our reasonings cannot give us light, we may 
take refuge in absolute trust in God. He is the 
Supreme Shelter: there is no other. He is im- 
pregnable. We may say to Him : " I am dying, 
and I do not know what will happen to me. 
Thou knowest ; that is enough for me. My des- 
tiny will be shaped to Thy holy Will. What 
Thou wilt do to me will be well done, and better 
than I could think." The most beautiful words 
before death are those of the dying Jesus: 
" Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit." 



176 ON LIFE'S THRESHOLD 



WITH regard to the honours paid to 
those who are no more, their prin- 
cipal quality should be simplicity 
and sincerity. It is contrary to good sense and 
piety to carry into death the difference between 
rich and poor, and to profane our mortal re- 
mains by surrounding them with the apparel of 
our pride and vanity. 

When we are asked where the dead have gone, 
the best reply would be, " They have gone to 
God." They belong to Him as they did while 
living, and as we do also. The tie between them 
and us is not broken, for we are bound together 
through God Himself, in Whom is our life. 

It is thus that our journey ends. God sur- 
rounds us on every side. We come from Him, 
we go to Him, and, according to the beautiful 
saying of Saint Augustine, " For Thyself, O 
God, hast Thou created us, and our hearts know 
no repose until they rest in Thee." 



ANALYTIC INDEX 



WHERE DO WE COME FROM? 



PAGE 

Introduction vii 

I. Life and its Source 3 

On emerging from unconsciousness. The 
great curiosity: where do things come from ? 
The lesson of the apple. Going back through 
the ages. The source of life is God. 

II. God 9 

Our good right to believe in Him. Noth- 
ing is without a cause. Natural and artificial 
flowers. There is a Thought at work in the 
universe. As every stream of water runs to 
the sea, our minds go toward God. 

III. Our Means of Knowing God ... 13 

Our littleness and His Greatness. The 
hand of a child cannot seize the stars, neither 
179 



180 ANALYTIC INDEX 



can the mind of man comprehend God. But 
we may approach Him. The signs of God 
in the visible world; the work speaks of the 
workman. The signs of God in the human 
heart. We are of the race of God. The 
religious tradition of humanity. The God 
of the Gospel. God is the Father. God 
is Love. 



WHO ARE WE? 

IV. Characters and Conditions of Hu- 
man Life 23 

What sort of a creature is man ? He be- 
longs to the animal, vegetable, and mineral 
kingdoms. Parent of everything. Is man 
an animal, like the others? Resemblance 
and difference. Human and animal intelli- 
gence. A comparison — horsemanship and 
unskilled riding. The moral conscience. 
The religious sentiment. We come from an 
inferior estate and are on the way to a higher 
life. The great struggle. Its anguish and 
its torments make the beauty of our life. 
Plato's chariot. 



ANALYTIC INDEX 



181 



V. Our Foes and Our Allies . . . . 34 

The evil in us. The enemy in the house. 
Baleful heredity. The evil around us. 
Bad example. Allies. Heredity qualities. 
Good examples. Their virtue. Example 
does not die with the one who has given it. 
Saints. Heroes. All the helpful powers of 
humanity surround us. 



WHAT ARE WE TO DO? 

VI. The Laws of Life 47 

What is a law? It is not an arbitrary 
command, but the true expression of reality. 
The laws of morality are no more conven- 
tions than are the level and plumb-line that 
rule the work of masons. Man discovers 
laws but he does not invent them. The 
laws governing a being depend upon the 
nature of the being. The law of a man is 
to develop himself normally. Physical 
health; intellectual and moral health. 



182 



ANALYTIC INDEX 



VII. Individual Man 55 

Respect for one's self. Legitimate and ille- 
gitimate pride. Realising what one is worth. 
Human dignity. The soul worth more than 
the whole world. Government of one's self. 
From lack of discipline to discipline. Mod- 
eration. Force of character. 

VIII. Society and its Law. Solidarity . 62 

The family tie. The national tie. True 
and false patriotism. Human solidarity. 
" I am a man, and nothing human is foreign 
to me." 

IX. Results of Solidarity. Obedience . 70 

Might one do without it ? Who invented 
it ? The latest comers need to ask their way. 
Our natural guides. Why, then, is it so dif- 
ficult to obey ? Personal willingness. Edu- 
cation consists in directing, not in suppress- 
ing. Have we a right to ask why? Yes, 
certainly, but there are cases where we must 
obey without understanding. An example. 
Honour thy father and thy mother. Do 



ANALYTIC INDEX 183 



PAGE 

grown-ups do what they like? The man 
who is truly free is the man who follows his 
conscience. He is filled with respect. 



Be True 78 

Confidence. Truth is like the ground 
under our feet. When the earth trembles, 
everything is unstable. Sincerity. How it 
is lost. Causes and forms of falsehood. 
Fear of punishment. Flattery. Deceit, 
calumny, hypocrisy. The power of untruth. 
Power greater than truth. The piece of one 
hundred sous and the piece of one sou. To 
lie is to make exist that which is not; it is 
to attempt the impossible. To speak the 
truth is to take one's stand on verity, on the 
rock. There is no power capable of van- 
quishing truth. Its day will come. Man is 
a witness. One man; one word. How the 
truth shall be told. 



Respect Life 92 

Life is the wonder of wonders. The in- 
stinct of destruction. Destroying for the 
sake of destroying. Roughness, stupidity, 
cruelty. The murderer lies asleep in us. 
Taking away life and spoiling it. Mur- 



184 



ANALYTIC INDEX 



derers by negligence. Protect life. Pity. 
The saving instinct. Comfort, succour, 
heal. The apprenticeship of kindness. 

XII. Defend Yourself; Do Not Avenge 

Yourself . . 102 

Ought one to defend himself? Yes. A 
saying of Christ. How is it best to defend 
yourself? Remedy worse than the evil. 
Vengeance is not defence. Eye for eye; 
tooth for tooth. The thirst for vengeance. 
Several means of defending yourself. Choose 
the best in every instance. One does not suf- 
fice for all cases. Gentleness and violence. 
One should defend others. Does that con- 
cern us ? What we do for our fellows, we 
are doing for ourselves. National defence. 

XIII. Be Honest Ill 

Have we the right of possession ? It is as 
if we were asked if we have the right to exist. 
Theft and its forms. To respect the prop- 
erty of others is not enough; we must re- 
spect our own. "It is mine; I may do with 
it what I wish." What are we to think of 
this proposition ? Economy. A large flock 
more difficult to guard than a small one. 



ANALYTIC INDEX 



185 



PAGE 



All property creates duties for us. To pos- 
sess is an art like playing he flute. Equal- 
ity of fortunes. 



XIV. Beware of the First Step . . . .119 

How one becomes a thief, a murderer, a 
man of evil conduct. The descent of evil. 



Is work a punishment? What the Bible 
says about it. A man's hand is a marvellous 
tool. Why was it created? To act is to 
live. "Go to the ant, thou sluggard." You 
will live by your effort; you will die by your 
inertia. One does not work for bread alone. 
Different forms of work. Their equal value. 
An ass working is a king compared to a man 
who does nothing. Mutual respect of labour- 
ers with the hand and with the brain. All 
servants of one another. Story of the little 
chimney-sweep. 



Existence is a succession of efforts and 
stops. Universal law of rest. Fatigue keeps 
his eye on the labourer. The right to rest. 



XV. Be Industrious 



126 



XVI. Rest 



142 



186 



ANALYTIC INDEX 



The day of rest. Use of one's leisure one of 
the great questions of life. To each one the 
choice of recreation. Meditation necessary. 
The rest of others. 



XVII. The Supreme Law 150 

Love. Without it the best advice remains 
a dead letter. It is the source of the good 
life. All men's faults spring from a lack of 
kindness. " Love one another." 

XVIII. Reparation of Evil 155 

Who should repair evil ? Those who have 
committed it? We should have to wait a 
long time. Who ought to fight the fire? 
The first one who sees it — easy conclusion 
to draw. "I told you so." Value of this 
remark. Forgiving offences. Fruitless and 
active repentance. The thirst to repair evil. 



WHERE ARE WE GOING? 

XIX. Death and Eternal Life . . . .167 

Why speak of death ? Two ways of con- 
sidering it. The good one. We are here 



ANALYTIC INDEX 187 



to live, but it is well to think that we shall 
not stay here always. Wise reflections. 
Death transformed and aggravated by the 
faults of men. Death, such as it is in the 
plan of God. We should resign ourselves to 
death, not to nothingness. Death is a stage, 
not a limit. Man is greater than death. Do 
not honour it by fearing it too much. Know 
how to die. Abandon yourself to God. In 
Him we have eternal life. " Father, into Thy 
Hands I commend my spirit." 



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